One Step Too Far (2 page)

“OWWWW. Daddy!” yelled Caroline. “Emily just kicked me. DAAADDY!”

Andrew poked his head round the kitchen door, stretching the cord of the wall-mounted phone until its kinks were pulled nearly straight.

“I didn’t do anything, Daddy,” said Emily, truthfully. “We’re just playing.”

“Stop that Emily,” he said mildly, and disappeared back into the kitchen.

Caroline disentangled her legs from her sister’s and then launched herself across the length of the sofa and pinched her twin hard on the upper arm. “Yes, you did,” she hissed.

“Daddy!” shrieked Emily. Andrew’s head appeared again, and he was cross now. “Just stop it the pair of you,” he said. “I’m on the phone,” and then he shut the kitchen door.

When Emily realised her father wasn’t going to help her she stopped crying and padded across the expanse of neat beige carpet to the doll’s house at the far end of the room, by the patio doors. This was Emily’s favourite toy, but it was not exclusively hers – like most of her things it had to be shared, and Caroline loved to move all the furniture into the wrong rooms, or even worse take it out altogether for the dog to eat. Caroline followed her over and said coaxingly, “Let’s play teddies,” and so Emily agreed although she didn’t entirely trust Caroline’s motives, and they'd set up their teddies for a tea party and even played quite nicely for a few minutes. Just as Caroline had tired of their half-game and stalked off to the kitchen to find her father, Emily heard a car pull up in front of the garage that formed the left side of the chalet-style house.

“Mummy!” Emily jumped off the couch and ran down the length of the living room as she heard her mother open the front door.

Caroline was on her way back from the kitchen, where she’d helped herself to a malted milk biscuit from the metal tin in the cupboard next to the cooker. Her father had quickly got off the phone and let her have one, which had surprised her, it was nearly tea time. She’d just bitten the cow’s head off, planning to savour each body part, but now she crammed the rest of the biscuit into her mouth, eating urgently. As Caroline came into the hall wiping crumbs off her face she saw her twin hurtling down the lounge towards her, and her first instinct was to move, get out the way.

“Hello Mummy!” called Emily. Frances was putting down her shopping, ready to open her arms to both her daughters. But when Caroline saw Emily’s joy and their mother’s reciprocity she wanted to shut the scene out, it made her feel cross for some reason. As Frances set the last bag down on the orange shag rug in the middle of the sunlit hall, she looked up and saw Caroline slam the lounge door shut, hard, at precisely the right moment. And then she saw Emily come tearing through the plate glass towards her, and she heard the sound of a bomb going off.

Andrew had chased Caroline around the oval-shaped dining table whilst Frances picked shards of glass out of Emily’s face and arms and legs. Miraculously, Emily’s cuts were mostly superficial, but Caroline was still sent to her room until tea-time, despite Andrew trying to convince his wife that Caroline hadn’t realised what would happen – she was too young, he'd said, she can’t possibly have done it deliberately – and that they should let her come downstairs now. But Frances was unrelenting, she’d never been so furious in her life.

Later Andrew hypothesised that it was only Emily’s speed at impact that saved her from Jeffrey Johnson’s fate, the boy four doors down who’d been left with a livid two inch scar on his cheek from a run-in with his own glass door. There was however one deeper cut on Emily’s knee which faded over time but failed to disappear completely, and she was never able to look at it without being reminded of her sister, and of course as she got older it reminded her of all the other things Caroline had done over the years, so the scar was much worse than it looked really. The Browns replaced the door with a wooden one after that, and although the living room was always that much darker, Frances felt happier that way.

3

At Euston the heat is still waiting for me as I step down from the carriage. The train is leaking people out onto the platform and everyone is rushing, busy, knowing where they’re going. I stop by a stanchion and remove my handbag from my armpit and shove it into my holdall, I can’t risk losing it. My clothes are too hot for the day ahead but I’m not changing now, I have too much to do – I have to buy a new phone, find somewhere to live, start my new life. I’m determined now. I refuse to think about Ben or my darling Charlie, I can’t think about them, about how they’ll be awake by now, will know I’ve gone. They have each other, they’ll cope, in fact they’ll be better off in the long run, I know they will. Yes, I’ve done the right thing.

I’d tried to research how to find somewhere to live in London, in those final unhinged weeks back in Manchester, back when I was Emily still. I’d made sure I always cleared the history on our computer so Ben wouldn’t suspect what I was about to do. Until I get a job I can’t afford too much on rent, I don’t know how long my money will have to last me, so I’m going to try to find a shared house – the type where eight or nine people (usually Australians I think) live together and turn every room that’s not a kitchen or a bathroom into a bedroom. There’s also less need for ID, for references in those kind of places, I mustn’t be traced. I pick up the local papers in another newsagents, shuffle along another queue, and venture out into the hazy, infected sunshine.

Where do I go now? I’m lost and feel panicky, like I want to turn back the clock and run home to my boy, like this is all a horrible mistake. I look around blankly until eventually I can process the images, can see the big ugly road in front of me, snarled up with traffic, drowning in car fumes. Sweat is breaking out under my right arm and across my shoulder where the strap of the holdall is touching my skin, and the hot smell of myself reminds me that I am really here, I really have done this. I cross over at the lights and walk straight, down a long wide road, across a square, past a distant statue, of Gandhi I think, and I don’t know where I’m going and it’s taking me forever. Eventually I see a mobile shop on the other side of the street and I’m relieved, like I’ve succeeded at something. The shop is large and dreary despite the posters and the video screens showing the latest offers – the bright moving images make the shop itself feel more dismal somehow. It’s empty apart from two shop assistants who eye me up as I enter, but then studiously ignore me for a couple of minutes although I can tell I’m being watched. The shop sells every network and I haven’t got a clue what to go for, it’s so confusing. All the phones look the same to me. A young man wearing a black uniform sidles up to me and asks me how I’m doing.

“Fine, thanks,” I say.

“Is there anything I can help you with? What are you after today?” His voice has a musical lilt to it and he has a handsome face with a neat black beard but he doesn't look at me straight and I don't look at him. We both stare at the shelves of phones, which are just dummy ones anyway and half of these are missing, there are just cables with nothing on the ends.

“I’m after a new phone.” My voice is timid, unfamiliar to me.

“Certainly, madam. Who are you with at the moment?”

“No-one,” I say, and I think
how true
. “I mean, I’ve lost my old one.”

“Who was that with?” the shop assistant persists.

“I can’t remember,” I say. “I just want a cheap phone on pay as you go,” and my tone is sharper than I mean it to be, and I didn't used to be like this. I pick up one of the battered looking dummy phones.

“This one looks OK, how much are calls on this?”

The man is patient and explains that it depends which network I choose, and I realise he must think I’m an idiot, but the truth is I’ve never bought a phone from scratch before, my mum and dad bought me my first one for college and I’ve always just upgraded or had work ones since then. The shop assistant makes me go through the rigmarole of of saying how many calls and texts I’m going to use, whether I want access to the internet, so he can work out which package is best for me, and I really don’t care after what I’ve been through and I don’t understand any of it anyway and I just want to get out of this place and call some house-share ads before it gets too late, before I panic, so I have somewhere to sleep tonight.

“Look, all I want is the cheapest deal, can’t you just decide for me,” I say, and it comes out wrong. The shop assistant looks hurt.

“Sorry,” I say, and to my horror I’m crying. The man puts his arm round me and in his beautiful sing song voice tells me I’ll be OK, and through my embarrassment I wonder how I’ve become such a bitch. He finds me a tissue and then picks out something he says will be perfect for me and even insists on giving me a discount. When I finally leave the shop I have a working new phone, fully topped up and ready to make calls. He was so kind he somehow made me remember there’s more going on in the world than my own misery – I must go back and thank him one day.

Out on the street I feel wobbly again – I need somewhere quiet to sit where I can compose myself, where I can make some calls, it’s much too noisy here. I take a bus, any bus, from outside Holborn station, and it takes me all the way down Piccadilly and drops me outside Green Park. I only know this because I’m reading the street signs, but I'm pretty sure Green Park is somewhere in the centre, and if I’m in the centre I can head in whichever direction to my new home, it can be wherever.

I walk through the park and am surprised at how quiet it is, once you turn off the main thoroughfares, away from the deck chairs and the tourists. I find a banked area where the grass has been left to grow long and I walk up towards the top and set down my bag in the shade. I kick off my ballet pumps and lie down in the yellow grass and there’s absolutely no-one around, just the low rumbling of the traffic outside the park to remind me I’m actually here, in the capital. The sun through the trees feels warm on my face and I shut my eyes and feel almost normal, content even. And then the image that has seared itself into my soul appears suddenly, vividly, and I shrink inside myself for the millionth time and open them again. It’s weird that it didn’t happen on the train when the grief of leaving was so raw. Just now I was almost feeling happy, from the physical tiredness, the thrill of the privacy, the anonymity, the promise of a new start, here in the middle of this great city. And happiness Catherine, that is
not allowed
.

I call nine or ten places, all over London. They’re either already gone (“Oh, you came through Loot, love, that’s a bit late, you need to call as soon as it goes online”) or there’s no reply, or the people don’t speak English well and don’t seem to know what I‘m talking about. I can always get a hotel, but the thought is depressing. To go through with this I need to start
now
, today. In a hotel it would be too easy to dwell on what I’ve done, what I’ve lost – too easy to hole up quietly and open my veins. I don’t trust myself.

I call the last ad on the list – room in shared house, Finsbury Park, £90 per week. I’ve no idea where it is. It’s more than I wanted to pay. I’m desperate. I think no-one’s going to answer and then at the last moment before I hang up someone picks up.

“Finsbury Park Palace,” says a laughing voice. I hesitate. “Hello?” she continues, in some kind of Essex accent, or at least that’s what I think it is.

“Uh, hello, I’m looking for a room, I saw your ad in Loot.”

“Did you? There’s no rooms here, babe.” Just as I’m about to hang up I hear someone interrupt in the background.

“Hey, hang on,” the voice continues. “Oh, it seems someone’s moved out today, but it wouldn’t be advertised yet. You must be answering the last ad, but that room went ages ago.”

“How much is this one?” I persist.

“It’s the size of a cupboard I warn you, and Fidel was a pig. £80 and it’s yours – saves us advertising for it, and you sound more normal than the usual nutters who ring.”

“It sounds fine,” I say. “I can be there by six,” and she gives me the address and I hang up.

I haven’t eaten anything all day. Hunger forms like a fist in my gut and I leave the park in search of something, anything to eat. I’m not sure which direction to head in, I’ve lost my bearings, so guess and go right, as that’s the way most people seem to be going. I pass a kiosk and buy a bag of crisps and a Coke, that’s all they have and my dithering annoys the man, he must think I’m a tourist instead of a runaway. I stand in the street and eat and drink with my holdall gripped between my feet, I’m so scared of losing it. Then I make my way, with everyone else, down the tiled steps into the tube station, which is fortunately right there, right where I need it, towards my new home.

The area feels rough and the house is a total dump. I’m not at all keen to go in and I question just what I’m doing here. (
Have I gone properly mad at last?
I wonder how it’s taken so long.) I have no idea what awaits me within but the outside is inauspicious – an untidy overgrown hedge, piled-up crates of empty beer and wine bottles next to three pungent over-filled wheelie bins in the garden, huge-patterned curtains hanging crookedly at the aluminium windows, chipped and dirty painted brickwork, a plastic porch. I think of our beautiful Chorlton cottage with its Chapel Green front door and geranium-filled window boxes, the scent of lavender, the trendy laid-back vibe of the neighbourhood. I realise I have little choice if I want somewhere to sleep tonight – I’m here now, it’s getting late – so I take a breath, straighten my shoulders under the weight of my bag and walk up the path.

A surly black girl answers the door. “Yes?” she says.

“Hi, I’ve come about the room,” I say.

“What room? There’s no rooms here.”

“Oh. I spoke to...” I realise I didn’t get Essex Girl’s name. I try again.

“I spoke to a girl on the phone this afternoon, she said someone had moved out, that a room had come up...”