The Other Ida (25 page)

She pushed him away from her, pulled her t-shirt over her head and unhooked her bra. He stood watching her, red faced still, his trousers round his ankles.

“Want to get in with me or sit on the loo?” she asked.

“Get in. I probably stink. God knows if we'll fit. At least we can give it a go.”

They lay in the bath for over an hour while she told Elliot everything. He pretended to listen at least.

“You were really young. Wasn't it a joke?” he asked as he shaved her legs.

“No, you know it wasn't. I said it was, to Alice, but it wasn't.”

“Well, you had a fucked up life. And you were copying what was in the play. And you didn't actually go through with it.”

“I would have done, I swear. She bit my hand.” Ida laughed, realising it sounded ridiculous.

“She has got some fight in her then. You did her a favour – toughened her up.”

“I'm not sure. I could never admit it at Confession. Maybe I should go now.”

“You could say sorry – to her.”

“But I'm not.”

“I think you are.” He kissed her on the knee. “Come on you mad bitch. Let's get out before we shrivel up to nothing.” He reached behind him and pulled out the plug.

They wrapped themselves in towels and carried their clothes downstairs to the study.

Alice spotted them from the kitchen as she mopped the floor despite Peter's strict instructions to leave the housework to the men. “You two can stay in the study tonight, Tom and I will go in the sitting room and Peter's going to have my room. Oh, and we're making a nut roast for later.”

“We're going to have a lie down, before dinner,” Ida said.

Elliot lay naked on the bed and put his arm out for her to join him. She rested her head on his almost concave chest.

“I tried to kill myself once,” Ida said. There it was, the other terrible thing. She lifted her head and looked at his face, waiting for him to ask.

“Just once?” Elliot said, laughing. “Come on you nutter. Let's go to sleep.”

Ida lay back down and closed her eyes. What on earth could she say to that?

Chapter twenty-seven

~ 1985 ~

Willie was in the shop, sorting, when Ida got in. She could see her breath. Mary said it was the coldest February she'd lived through, and she was five hundred years old.

“Where's your Ma?” Ida asked.

“She had a hospital appointment, about her hip. You're late, again,” he said, looking up at her.

She quite fancied Willie, though she'd never admit it to anyone. He was about forty or something, with a messy brown beard and pale blue eyes. And he was rough too, she'd seen him fight outside the pub, but he wasn't thuggy like the others. He was alright.

“I'm sorry. I got locked out. Or in.” Ida laughed at her lie, realising she made no sense. She wasn't used to explaining herself, they only paid her for the hours she did, and her start time was flexible, wasn't it?

And today she was stoned. Really, unbelievably, insanely stoned. Tina had got some new stuff in and it was strong. They'd been doing bongs all morning and eaten some of it too.

“You're stoned,” he said.

“Yes,” Ida laughed.

“This has got to stop. You've been taking too many drugs these last couple of months, you look awful.”

“Shit,” Ida said, surprised.

“Well can you be trusted to wait in here until I get back from the tip? Make a cup of coffee and try to sort yourself out.”

“Yes,” Ida said again, catching sight of herself in the mirror and realising how tiny and red her eyes had gone.

The door swung as he left and the bell rang. She sat on Mary's stool. It was in the perfect spot, you could see the whole shop – and check no one was on the rob – as well as out of the grubby window that faced the street.

He hates me
, Ida thought.
It was some sort of test and I failed. I bet he's got cameras all over the place
. In that case she better look as normal as possible. She tried hard to make her face look casual and non-stoned. What if he got the police involved?

As she sat still she saw people she knew walking past, men from the pub she'd used to work at, or the occasional girl she'd gone to school with – when, briefly, she had gone to school. It was snowing now, and they had on hats or hoods, but when she caught a glimpse of their faces she recognised each one of them. They were people she'd forgotten existed.

A toddler in a red snowsuit pressed her face against the glass and stuck out her tongue before the child's mother pulled her away. She knew the child. It was Alice, was it? It had looked like Alice. But could her sister still be that young? The thought flew away as soon as it had come and when she tried to remember what she'd just been thinking, the thing that had made her scared, she had to accept it had gone for good.

She was hungry. There would be nothing to eat. But if she stayed sitting here she was going to fall asleep or vomit all over her boots.

Ida jumped off the stool and began walking round the room. She'd rummaged here a hundred times, but there was always something new to find and she was never normally left alone.

So many photos, boxes full of them. They were the saddest. The thing that meant the most to the people who'd owned them, but the least to the people who came into the shop.

Underneath the tables were piled-up crates and Ida took one out and started to unpack it. Letters, postcards, a porcelain cat, and a pack of cards with a scribbled-on score sheet. They'd been playing gin rummy, whoever these people had been.

Before she could stop it, she remembered playing with her ma. She looked at the scorecard and realised the big, scratchy writing looked exactly like Bridie's.

Under it was a copy – her copy, surely? – of
Jane Eyre
.

She put it down, shakily, and walked over to a mound of toys: broken Barbies and Action Men, a one-eyed teddy bear, a terrifying gollywog, and a black-haired Sindy doll with a partly rubbed-off nose.

The Sindy she'd had when she was small.

She took deep, slow breaths as she reached the window. Piled up on the sill were ornaments and horse brasses, the things Mary thought passers-by might want. She ran her hands over them and noticed, in between two decanters, an empty wooden box of crystallised ginger and a battered, damp copy of her mother's play.

Ida stood at the bus stop trying to look inconspicuous, shaking her head at drivers when they slowed to stop. Her clothes were icy and she was shaking, rubbing her arms as fast as she could with her white hands.

Now the people who walked past her were wearing Bridie's things. Her blue kimono; her hairpiece; her nightdress; her pearls.

Ida wanted to reach out for them – she'd loved the kimono best of all – but nothing would work properly, not her limbs or her brain.

It wasn't right. None of it was right. Bridie had made her, Bridie had cursed her, and now Bridie had escaped.

Maybe things would be better, or maybe they'd be worse.

She'd walked out of the shop without locking it. People had probably gone in and stolen stuff, all that treasure she'd laid out so carefully. And her mother's things. She had left her mother's things there too.

Terri said Bridie had got a bit better, dried out and started eating. But it hadn't made any difference, had it? Her mother was dead. Ma was dead. Bridie Adair was dead.

They'd left Willie to clean out her house. And no one had thought to tell Ida. It hadn't happened last year – when Ida had left her on the floor – but it had happened now. It was probably still Ida's fault.

She couldn't face the bedsit, her rent was already late. Tina was going to go mad.

Where the fuck was she going to go?

Two doors down from the bus stop there was a dirty-looking locals' pub she'd never been into. The windows were frosted, the light was orange through the glass, and Ida had the feeling it would be ancient inside, that if she dared to go in she'd be offered bread and cheese and a place to feed her horse.

She would make her way to the ladies' loos, stand under the hand driers, then lock herself in a cubicle until she got chucked out. It was the only plan she had.

A small shaven-headed man was going in too, and she squeezed past his round belly.

“Bloody hell, love, you're frozen,” he said. “Becky, sweetheart, get this girl a brandy. Put it on my tab.”

The bar woman carried on polishing a glass. “She looks about fifteen Dave.”

He pointed at Ida's tits. “You're having a laugh Beck! She's at least twenty. Here,” he took Ida's arm and a group of men moved away so they could be served.

“New girlfriend?” one of them said and the others laughed. “Carol's not going to be happy about this.”

“Pah,” he said.

The glass was on the bar and he handed it to Ida. “You sit yourself there and drink that down. Have as many as you want on me. What's your name, love?”

“Annie,” Ida said.

The brandy moved right round her body, loosening her joints and heating up her head. She finished it quickly.

The barmaid frowned. “You're not a junkie are you?”

“No.”

“Okay. Well, behave yourself. You can use the driers in the toilet to get yourself defrosted.”

“Get her another one, the poor girl's thirsty,” said Dave, and Becky turned to pour it out. Dave put his hand on Ida's thigh and she moved it away and hopped off her stool.

Ida crouched underneath the drier, the wonderful heat thawing her jumper and warming the back of her neck. People did moan – she was always amazed how much everyone moaned – when brandy and a hand drier were all you needed to make everything okay.

At five thirty Becky stopped serving Ida and asked Dave to take her home.

He'd given up on both Ida and the drinks and was busy at the fruit machine, chain-smoking.

“Lock in!” Ida shouted. She wasn't as drunk as they thought she was, she knew she'd be alright.

“Not time for that yet,” said Becky. “The grown-ups have still got a few hours left in us.”

“Fuck off,” said Ida.

“Dave, will you sort this out?” Becky said.

He'd won forty quid a while before but had pumped it all back in. “Fucking hell.” He punched the machine and the group of men to his left went quiet. “What do you want me to do then Beck?”

“Put her in a cab?” she said.

“Well I don't have any cash because of your fucking dickhead machine.”

“Fuck it, I'll go and drink in the street,” Ida said.

“I'll walk you home.” He took her by the hand and dragged her outside while she laughed.

“Hey,” Becky shouted. “Look after her now.”

Dave held Ida upright as they walked, slagging off his ex-wife and the men who drank at the pub.

Occasionally he'd lunge towards her for kiss, pushing her against shop windows and thrusting his fat tongue into her mouth.

It was only six and there were lots of people about. Ida laughed to think of someone finding her like this, snogging some gross old man against the door of The Silver Spoon.

“Let's go down here,” he said, leading her into the narrow alley by the side of the cafe.

He put his hand up her top.

She felt suddenly very sick.

“Don't,” she said.

“You've got a fucking boyfriend, haven't you? Same old story, rinse a bloke for all he's worth…”

“I've got a girlfriend. An American girlfriend,” Ida said.

“You shitting me?”

“No.”

“You pissed away my tab all night when you were a fucking dyke?”

“Yeah, a fifteen-year-old dyke, you stupid prick,” she said.

He slapped her, hard, and her head jerked to the left. She'd never been slapped by a man before and the pain was deep and went right through her.

She started to laugh.

“You ugly bitch,” he said.

Ida flung back her head and threw it forward into his. The force sent him off balance and he slipped on the ice and onto his back, his head hitting the concrete with a crack. She crouched next to him and pushed her palm into his face.

As she stood up he grabbed her leg. With her free foot she began to kick, her huge red boots meeting his skull again and again. He stopped struggling and started to wail but she kept kicking, her thigh throbbing and the ground around his bald head slick with a halo of blood.

Vomit rose into her mouth and she leant forwards, puking all over Dave's limp left arm.

As she stood outside her mother's house Ida realised she had no idea how she'd got there. Her head was throbbing, her lips were swollen and crusty, and she was clutching a bottle of vodka she had no memory of buying. But at least she knew why she'd come. Her mother was dead. Somehow she had found out her mother was dead. It took all of her effort to remember how she knew. Had someone told her? No. She'd found the things in the shop.

The windows were black and Ida imagined the empty hall, as bare as when they'd first moved in. “It's only the rattssss,” she whispered under her breath.

A light appeared in the bathroom window and a woman, who looked like her mother, stood in front of the mirror.

Ida knelt down.

The street lamps came on
one, two, three
,
four
all down the road and Ida looked at the frosty pavement, sparkling under the electric lights. But she wasn't cold.

She peered over the top of the gate and saw the woman was still there. It was her mother, it really was. Bridie was still alive.

“No,” Ida said. “No.”

Back in the shop, when Ida had found all those things, she'd thought she was upset. But now she realised it hadn't been that at all. In fact her terrible broken brain was so desperate for her ma to die that it had only taken a few random bits of junk to convince her that she had.