One Moment, One Morning (26 page)

‘It’s up to you,’ she says.

‘I can’t handle any more sympathy from people I hardly know.’

Anna drops her voice. ‘We’d best hide, then. They might see we’re here.’ The front door has stained and frosted glass panels. Press your face up close and it is easy to tell if someone is home – the line of vision is straight down the hall.

‘Ooh, yes.’ Karen quickly drops on all fours and scuttles under the table.

Anna crawls in to join her. They are at Toby’s level – he scuttles over, purring.

‘This is the second time this week I’ve been under a kitchen table,’ whispers Karen. ‘No wonder I’m going bonkers.’

‘How come?’

‘Molly hid under Tracy’s when she had that tantrum.’

‘Ah.’

After a while, Karen whispers, ‘Have they gone yet?’

‘I’ll check.’ Anna edges a chair out of the way and pokes her head out. ‘Oh!’ She rapidly pulls it back in. ‘They saw me!’

‘Shit.’

‘They were peeping through the letterbox!’

‘Whatever will they think of us?’

‘That we’ve lost the plot completely?’ Their shoulders shake with suppressed laughter.

At that moment a voice bellows towards them. ‘Anna? What the hell are you doing?’

‘Bollocks,’ says Anna.

‘Who is it?’

‘Steve.’

‘Did you know he was coming?’

‘No.’

‘We’d better let him in, then.’ Karen scrambles to her feet. ‘Hang on a sec!’ she calls, then whispers, ‘What’s he doing here?’

‘Don’t know.’ Anna shrugs. Tellingly, she is far from glad at the prospect of seeing him. ‘He was asleep when I left,’ she explains, dusting down her trousers and following Karen to the door.

Steve is standing on the doorstep. Anna observes at once, relieved, that he is sober. The reek of booze has gone; she can smell his deodorant. He is freshly shaved, too.

Moreover, he is brandishing a cardboard box. It takes her a moment to be sure her eyes are not deceiving her. But, no, they’re not: it’s full of kitchen implements; fluted quiche tins, baking trays, pie cases, a tartlet holder, her Delia Smith recipe book. He has even tucked her gingham apron into a measuring jug.

‘Bloody hell,’ she says.

‘I thought you might need me,’ he states. ‘And I didn’t know what you already have in the way of dishes. Can I come in?’

‘Oh, er . . . yes,’ says Karen. They both step back to make way.

Anna is puzzled. ‘Didn’t you have work today?’

‘Mike called me this morning. The plaster needs to dry before I can paint the place I was supposed to. He said leave it till Monday.’ Mike is a builder who often subcontracts work to Steve.

‘You saw my note, then?’ Anna had left one on the hall table earlier, letting Steve know where she was going.

‘Yup. I thought I’d come and help.’ He glances round. ‘Looks like you need it.’ Steve is so good at cooking, preparing food for lots of people won’t faze him in the slightest. In fact, sober, he’ll relish it.

‘Gosh, darling, that’s brilliant.’ Anna kisses him. Now he’s said that – and reminded her of how thoughtful and generous he can be – she is really happy to see him, and Karen is positively beaming. But this is not the only reason Anna is delighted. It is that she hasn’t had to ask him. He has recognized her need – and Karen’s – of his own accord. He is being truly helpful. And as he unpacks his box of supplies onto the draining board – the only surface where there is room – she thinks to herself that whilst this might not make up entirely for his behaviour of the night before, it does go some way towards redeeming him.

*     *     *

Steve pulls the apron over his head.

‘Karen, I haven’t said how sorry I am.’ He stands back, looks at her.

‘Thank you,’ says Karen. She sees the compassion in his eyes, and sadness hits her again, right in the solar plexus, winding her. How could she have been
laughing
?

Steve opens his arms, as if instinctively gleaning that this is what she needs. Karen almost falls forward into them, and he pulls her in to his chest, tight. At once she is aware that this is the first time she has been held, properly hugged, by a man, since Simon died. Steve is not as big as Simon. He is not quite as tall, is less solid around the trunk. His apron is not as soft as Simon’s jumper would be; he is not as cuddly. He smells different. But still, it takes Karen back, in a rush, to that feeling of safety, intimacy and protection that she associates with Simon, and triggers something deep within her. She starts to cry.

There have been so many, many words, but she has had very little physical comfort, and none like this. Every fibre of her being aches for Simon: the scent of him, the touch of him, the feel of him, his warmth. She would do anything at that moment for it to be Simon, standing here, holding her tight. Anything. Soon she is sobbing so hard that she is making the front of Steve’s apron wet.

Steve says nothing, other than, ‘Karen, our poor Karen,’ very softly. And he strokes her hair, gently.

For several minutes they stand there, clutching one another.

Eventually Karen steps away, pulls out of his arms.

She smiles at him and says, ‘Thank you.’ There is no need for further discussion. He has given her something precious; they both know that.

‘Right.’ Steve takes a deep breath and ties up the strings of the apron around his back. ‘Where shall we start?’

*     *     *

Lou cycles along the seafront; her muscles are warm, she is still hot from tennis. Just after the Palace Pier, she turns left into one of the side streets and, a few yards up, brakes, flips her leg over the saddle and locks her bike to some black iron railings. From the outside there is little to suggest that the Regency building – with once-grand ornate crevices and arched windows – is now a shelter for homeless men. It is here that Lou volunteers every Friday, leading a group counselling session.

She usually ends up with about ten people; half of whom change from one week to another, half of whom are more constant attendees. She tries not to allow those who come regularly to dominate, but it can be hard. It is much easier – and more rewarding – working with those who participate on a frequent basis. With newcomers she feels they are just getting used to the set-up by the time the session finishes, and there is often little she can do to help. These are men with complex histories, and, despite their similarities, they are individuals. They are homeless for very different reasons – there are alcoholics and drug addicts, men with mental health problems, men whose relationships have broken down, or who have lost their jobs or suffered some kind of trauma.

She scans the circle quickly: there are eight today; only three regulars, and – she sighs inwardly – five people she has never seen before. Why are there so few familiar faces?

A wooden chair with a red fabric seat is empty. Scrawled across the back are the words, ‘JIM’S CHARE. DO NOT USE!!!’ in indelible marker. Lou knows Jim is not a hostile man; far from it: it is purely an indication of the struggle these men face every day to retain whatever material possessions they have acquired.

Jim has been coming to her group almost as long as she has been volunteering, which is nearly two years now. He misses weeks occasionally, and he never says very much, sometimes not a word, but there’s something about him that Lou particularly likes. She first encountered him before he started coming to the centre, on a street corner near her home in Kemptown. He was sitting in a doorway, making himself sandwiches from sliced brown bread, butter and cottage cheese, using a white plastic knife. The painstaking way he was setting about it – while dressed in a cumbersome old woollen coat, back hunched against the wind and the damp – caught her eye. Later, when she met him properly, she asked if he was particularly fond of brown bread and cottage cheese. He explained he liked to eat well, that the sandwiches were better for him than the food offered by the hostel. Initially it struck Lou as incongruous, the notion that a homeless man should be so concerned about his health: she’d assumed they were mainly addicts, bent on destroying their bodies. But the longer she worked at the centre, the more she realized it wasn’t odd at all. Her presumptions were wrong: Jim might be a lost soul, a loner, but he never, as far as she knew, touched drugs or alcohol. She would see him outside often, despite his place at the hostel, wandering around Kemptown, collecting rubbish from pavements. Yet he wasn’t foraging for food, or amassing bags of stuff to carry round with him. He was tidying up. He would put the rubbish, bit by bit, into public waste bins, clearing the debris left by other, less thoughtful, people and the seagulls. His diligence, his perfectionism, touched her.

The circle is ready to begin.

‘So where is Jim?’ Lou asks. ‘He wasn’t here last week either.’

‘Gone,’ says Roddy. An older guy, he too is a regular. He is not that bright and his speech lacks frills, but he is well meaning and honest, friendly with most of the other guys.

‘Gone?’ Lou is used to transience; men pass through the centre all the time. Nevertheless, she would be very sad to see Jim leave.

Roddy nods.

‘Last week you didn’t know where he was,’ says Lou. ‘You said he might be coming back.’

‘We know where he was now,’ says Roddy.

There is something in his tone that sounds ominous. ‘Where?’

‘Sea.’

‘Oh?’ Another member of the circle starts rocking his chair violently as if to articulate that he is not getting enough attention. It bangs against the wall, distracting them: Lou struggles to focus. ‘Shh, please, Tim. We’ll be with you in a second. Please carry on, Roddy.’

Roddy clarifies. ‘He took a walk. Into it.’

‘The sea?’ Lou shivers. It is February, the water is freezing.

‘They found him, floating. Washed up by the pier, on Tuesday.’

‘Oh, God.’ Lou is winded. ‘What happened?’

‘He went on a bender.’

‘But I didn’t think Jim drank.’

‘He didn’t, not for years.’

‘So what made him drink now, then?’

Roddy shrugs. ‘He found out his wife got remarried.’

‘Jim had a wife? I didn’t know.’ Lou feels dreadful: she has been seeing him for so long and yet was unaware.

‘Yep. They split up a decade back. She kicked him out – that’s how he ended up on the streets. I thought you knew that?’

‘No.’ She is choked. Jim kept so much contained. ‘How did he find out she was married?’

‘Bumped into her. She still lives in Brighton, Whitehawk. She told him.’

‘Ah.’ Lou is finding it hard to take it in.

‘First drink he’s had in a long time. They hauled him out, early morning. All grey, like a fish, apparently.’

Lou is shocked. It’s not the first time one of her group has died, but previously there have been signs; increasing drug use or depression – she has seen it coming. But she thought Jim was different. She hadn’t known he’d been a drinker in the past, but even if she had, she’d never have thought he would go down that road again. She had admired him, the way he managed to be clean, even when he had nothing: no family to look after him, no job, no home of his own. And she had thought that he, more than any of the men that surround her, would, ultimately, be OK. Yet he was as vulnerable as any of them, seemingly more so: they are here, he is dead.

Lou takes a deep breath and struggles to regain her composure. ‘Perhaps we can have a few moments’ silence to remember him.’

And as they sit, heads bowed, she thinks, so that was why he was so determined to keep healthy – he knew how fragile he was. It reminds her; it is never over, addiction. Addicts are never cured completely, because one day, in a few split seconds, something can happen that makes temptation impossible to resist, even after years of abstention. So they are always recovering, lives precarious; the potential for relapse hanging over them, like a guillotine waiting to fall.

Steve opens the oven door. ‘Perfect. Pass me the gloves.’

Anna does as she is told. Karen’s kitchen is his territory now; he has established his domain over the course of the afternoon – even the kitten has been banished to the living room. Anna feels a whoosh of hot air as Steve removes two quiches from the bottom oven and a third from the top, each swollen with baked egg and cheese and expertly browned.

‘One tuna, one ham and mushroom and one mixed vegetable,’ he announces, laying them on mats so they don’t scald the worktop.

Anna feels a mix of relief and pride. Relief that they have come so far in the last few hours; pride in Steve’s accomplishment.

‘I think that’s us done for today,’ he says, looking around. The surfaces that were previously covered in tins, packets and jars are testimony to his endeavours. Almost miraculously, he has transformed an ill-matched assortment of purchases into an appetizing array. He has made vast bowls of salsa dip and hummus, from scratch. He has assembled trays of dates stuffed with Parmesan wrapped in bacon, and goat’s cheese, grape and pistachio truffles. He has baked four pizzas and one caramelized onion tart, and made three giant salads – one cracked wheat and two bean – that will, he has assured Karen, get better as they absorb dressing overnight. Anna did have to head to the local delicatessen for extra ingredients, not once but twice, and they have both been barked at several times, but nonetheless, it is a truly spectacular spread.