Lady Bag (11 page)

I suppose it’s my fault: it was me, after all, who told him he’d make more money if he looked as if he was putting the dog first.

‘And whose idea was it to dress her in a wet shirt? I’m sure none of us will forget the sight of her being carried out of a burning building wearing a Ralph Lauren polo shirt.’

‘Was it Ralph Lauren?’ Smister said, impressed.

I would never be able to forgive him for exploiting Electra on a blue chair when she should’ve been guest of honour on a scarlet sofa.

‘Nothing but the best for Electra,’ he said looking anxiously at me. ‘Mum gave us all wet clothes. She knew what to do after Electra got her out of bed. Tina would be here with us if she hadn’t panicked and tried to open the bedroom door.’

‘So you were all cut off from the exit and trapped in the one room? That must’ve been terrifying.’

‘Oh yes, terrifying,’ Smister gasped. ‘It was Electra who kept us together. Except for Tina. Then Mum blacked out and I thought we were going to die. It was Electra’s faith that pulled me through.’

‘And a couple of big strong firemen,’ I said trying to stop myself throwing up. ‘They pulled you through the window.’

Smister gave me a beatific smile and a vicious pinch on the back of my arm.

‘So many heroes,’ Carmel purred.

‘And a few villains,’ I said. ‘Who started the fire, and why?’ The true answers to those questions were, first: Too-Tall Tina, and second: because she was a lunatic. But that wasn’t what I wanted to say.

Carmel started to mither something about an investigation but I interrupted. I didn’t have long. I already had the shakes and they were turning into the rattles. The air was creaking in my chest like an un-oiled hinge. And I was very anxious because appearing on national TV isn’t the best way to escape police attention.

I said, ‘Developers are trying to force the long-time residents out of South Dock High Rise. They’re employing so-called security men to fill empty flats with junkies and homeless folk and folk with antisocial problems. And they’re trying to scare people by starting fires and making the building unliveable.’ I would’ve gone on but talking squeezed my lungs into wet retching coughs. Electra stood up and whined in concern.

Carmel said, ‘You’ve no proof of that, Mrs Munrow.’

‘I do have proof,’ I said. ‘
I’m
the proof. The Corrupter, the Devil, he’s used me and Smis… Josepha like bog paper. Get in his way and he’ll stomp on you so hard you’ll end up a bad smelling smear on his doormat.’

‘Cut!’ yelled Carmel. She smelled of air freshener. I hate air freshener. It makes me want to hurl.

Chapter
18

More Exposure

‘I
can’t believe you did that.’ Smister was shrieking. ‘You made us look totally insane.’ He held a fistful of the money the studio people collected for us before they actually met us.

‘Barking mad,’ murmured Electra.

‘I need a drink.’

Smister glanced at me craftily. ‘I’ll get you a drink if you give me all the rest of those big white tablets.’

I stopped. Even the rain smelled of soot. I said, ‘Did you take Too-Tall Tina’s medication?’

‘What’re you talking about?’

‘You know what I’m talking about.’ I took the white bombers out of the handbag, and walked to the nearest drain in the road. I popped one tablet out of its plastic bubble. Water gargled restlessly. Rain and shite were hurrying away underground to the Thames. I dropped the tablet down the drain. A couple of hours’ worth of pain relief swam away beneath our feet to numb the little fishes. Never,
ever
, say I don’t make sacrifices.

Smister ambled casually towards me. ‘We shouldn’t be here. We’re too close to the studio. The cops’re probably on their way.’

He was right. I popped another bubble. ‘Don’t you lay one finger on me,’ I said. ‘I’m so sick of everyone roughing me up. Are you listening?’

‘I’m
listening
. Don’t do anything else crazy.’

I took the tablet between thumb and forefinger. ‘TT said you took her medication. She was a fire nut. She’d done it before. She said, “The alarms go off and then they come and rescue me.” That sounds like a habit to me. And you took her meds. The way you keep taking mine.’

‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘When did she say that?’

I couldn’t remember, so I just stared at him accusingly.

‘I didn’t take her tablets. I swear.’ His eyes were so blue and transparent I couldn’t believe they hid murky depths. He said, ‘When I met her there was a bunch of crusties trying to take her prescription off of her. Those arseholes wanted her scrip
and
her disability allowance. And she was so short of love she was going to hand ’em over.’

‘So she gave them to you instead. She’s going to die cos she was “so short of love”?’

‘Don’t say that. She’ll pull through, won’t she?’ His blue eyes were brimming. I couldn’t tell rain and tears apart. ‘I only took a couple of tabs, I swear. And she gave me some money for food. But she had money left. Honestly.’

Smister was crying for Too-Tall Tina. Which, I have to admit, was more than I was doing. I was rattling, angry and suspicious, but I wasn’t in mourning.

Electra stepped gracefully across the puddles to his side. She laid her trusting snout against his hand and he stroked her slim head. She was weeping too.

‘Hypocrite,’ I said. ‘You didn’t care when she was alive.’

‘I looked after her,’ Smister wept. ‘I let her stay with us.’

‘So that Kev could give her one of his famous whackings.’

‘At least he was honest. Those crusties would’ve been her best friends until she’d given them everything she’d got, and then they’d have dumped her. They’d
all
have whacked her. You know they would.’

I had to admit that was true too. And I knew that some people are so short of love that even a whacking is welcome attention. If anyone understood about that it was Smister. And me.

I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had a stabbing headache and my hands were trembling for all to see. ‘Come on,’ I said, deciding that the truth wasn’t worth fighting my only friends about. ‘I
got
to have a drink.’

I didn’t mention the fact that he’d been pimping for Kev—bringing in trash like me to make life unbearable for the old residents. Which of us hasn’t dirtied ourselves for love?

We bought wine and dog food at a mini-mart, and I fed Electra from a paper plate I found near a bin. While she was eating, Smister and I shared a bottle of wine. It was a normal sized bottle and we shared properly, sip for sip.

Smister said, ‘Don’t get twatted. We’ve got to lay low and chill. We can’t do that if you’re rolling around, roaring drunk.’

‘I don’t roar.’

‘I’ve seen you.’

‘He’s right,’ Electra said. ‘I don’t feel safe when you binge.’

‘I got to admit you were great in the fire,’ Smister said. ‘I could’ve been badly singed if it wasn’t for the soaked t-shirts. I could’ve lost my eyelashes.’

He sounded grateful. The headache vanished, and so did the rattles and the nausea. I said, ‘Let’s go north of the river. I never feel comfortable in South London.’

‘Me neither,’ Electra said.

So we caught a bus to Liverpool Street Station and went to the concourse to find lunch. I was hungry and looking forward to a burger and beans, but the first thing I saw was an early edition of the Evening Standard on a station newsstand. There was a picture of me on page one. It was under a headline that screamed: ‘
Impostor
!’

‘Shit!’ Smister stopped so suddenly that Electra bumped into his legs.

I hissed, ‘Keep walking. Don’t attract attention.’

But he went over to the newsstand. I put my head down and hurried off to the burger bar. My hands were sweating and trembling. I bought two burgers and went to hide in the ladies’ lavatory to eat.

Smister joined us there but was too excited to eat anything. ‘My picture’s in there too,’ he said. He opened the paper and showed me a picture of himself in Craig’s arms being carried to the ambulance.

‘I look like a waif.’ He sighed in satisfaction. ‘Miss Angelic Rescue of the Month. Hardly any slap, a strategically placed smear of soot under one cheekbone and look at those legs. Long or what?’

There was a larger photo of Electra, wearing her wet Ralph Lauren polo shirt, standing on her hind legs looking regal. The caption read, ‘K-nine Hero-ine.’

‘What do they say about me?’ I could hardly breathe enough air in to ask the question.

Smister folded the paper. ‘You might want a disguise. Your brother’s saying you’re not his sister.’

Thank fuck it was still raining. I bought an umbrella. Everyone hid their heads under umbrellas.

‘It won’t always be raining,’ Smister said. ‘What will you do when it stops?’

But I knew it would never stop. It was one of those years.

We went to a Christian Aid shop. I bought a man’s raincoat, a man’s fedora and a dry purple velour leisure suit with a hood, all for thirteen pounds. There were no shoes to fit me. Smister made vomiting faces at me, but the sales woman was so old she hardly noticed. She tottered into the back of the shop to fetch a bowl of water for Electra.

Smister turned his nose up at all the clothes. He said he knew an Oxfam in Chelsea that had cast-off designer labels. So we took the Circle Line from Liverpool Street to Sloane Square and I read the Standard.

On the front page was a photo of me, taken off the TV. I think it must’ve been just before I honked on Carmel’s Monolo Blah-knickers because I have a look of desperation in my undamaged eye. My face is still swollen lopsided. The layers of sopping wet clothing have dried in wads and wrinkles. The words lumpy, bumpy, dumpy, grumpy and frumpy hardly begin to describe me. Even so, I look recognisably human—ten times better than the reprinted picture of me in hospital they inset beside it.

I tilted the brim of my new hat down to my nose and read on about how Natalie Munrow’s brother talked to the Standard reporter after the first picture was published. He’d already expressed serious doubts to the police that the woman in hospital was his sister. But he hadn’t been able to identify the dead woman either. He couldn’t tell who she was. The police were comparing the brother’s DNA with the body’s, but until they had the results they were hinting that grief plays tricks and he might be in denial.

The headline shrieked, ‘IMPOSTER’, because it seemed that the reporter from the Standard took a tape of the catastrophic interview with Carmel to show him, and he said it was absolutely, positively not his sister.

He also said that no way, no how, could Josepha be Natalie’s daughter. His sister was childless.

Smister, who was reading over my shoulder, said, ‘He’s right, isn’t he? You’re not Natalie Munrow. That’s why you can’t remember your PIN number. You was never a financial executive.’

‘Yes I was,’ I said quietly.

‘Yes she was,’ Electra said. ‘She was a branch manager.’

‘Right!’ Smister said. ‘And I’m a fairy princess.’

‘I’m a
furry
princess,’ Electra said.

‘You are,’ I agreed, stroking her sleek head, ‘you can be anything you like.’

‘Well,’ Smister said, ‘I can be a fairy princess more easily than you can be executive material.’

‘If I don’t have another drink soon, I’ll fall apart.’

‘You
promised
,’ Smister and Electra said together. And I couldn’t remember if I had or not.

Natalie’s brother told the reporter that a stranger was cavorting round town spending his sister’s money—money that was his and his sons’ by right as her only living relatives. His name was Malcolm Munrow. But he was lying: I don’t cavort; I’ve never cavorted in my life. Well, maybe once—but the only one who knew about that was Gram Lucifer Attwood. Could the Devil be in league with Natalie’s brother?

‘Does it say anything about Too-Tall in there?’ Smister’s voice had a trepidacious shake in it.

I looked, but the article only said that the fire crew had dealt so speedily with the fire that only a handful of victims had been taken to St George’s Hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation.

We got off the train at Sloane Square and I couldn’t help remembering that I was now quite close to the little mews house with the yellow front door—just a step away from a murder enquiry, from being at best a witness and at worst a suspect.

Traffic ripped by on the wet road like torn Velcro. Chelsea rain smells of smoked haddock, and everyone, whether they’re wearing Armani or jailhouse chic, looks expensive.

First Smister went into a chemist where he bought everything a woman needs to look like a proper woman, from glossy head to pink-tipped toe. He bought shampoo, conditioner, sculpting foam, serum, depilatory and all the
et ceteras
. It was this more than anything else that made me realise that he couldn’t live on the streets. He needed bathrooms and mirrors. He needed the time and privacy it takes to be a woman. I am what a woman looks like when she has no bathroom, no pride, no privacy and above all no money. Smister needed lots. Being a proper woman is a costly business.

I hadn’t really walked for ages, and it felt weird without a backpack and a bedroll. Smister was a pain in the arse: he was acting as if we were two girls out shopping, stopping and sighing at overpriced window displays.

At the end of the Kings Road, just as you get to World’s End, is his favourite charity shop. He was right, it was stocked with lightly used designer cast-offs and it wasn’t long before he’d spent every penny he had. He was like a little girl—his notion of shopping was to grab everything pink or black off the rails and to squeal.

He had absolutely no idea about how to conserve energy or money. Life on the street is all about having much more time than money or energy. Electra knew, but Smister clearly didn’t.

It was time for me to turn my back on him. We would never be fit companions. He would never understand the street or that if you want nothing you’ll want
for
nothing. He’d never understand the difference between want and need. And I would never understand why he wanted to cut his genitals off. I could understand being really unhappy about who you are; even to the point of suicide. But I don’t see how turning into a Barbie girl by self-mutilation could make him any happier. True, I’d never talked to him about it, but that was because he never actually seemed depressed with the way he was. If you don’t count him wanting to be bombed out of his head all the time, he seemed quite optimistic and cheerful.

While he was shrieking, ‘Ooh, D&G!’ I exchanged the Louis Vuitton for a strong, lightweight, backpack. It was time for me to reject aspirational handbags and become invisible again.