The Sisterhood (20 page)

'Sorry to hear that,' he said. 'Righty-ho. I'm off. The world of work beckons.' He winked at me. I wasn't sure why.

I smiled at him again. 'Have fun.'

'Yeah, right. Fun. That's one word for it. What are you up to today?'

'I'm going out. I'm meeting someone for lunch, and probably doing a bit of shopping. Although I'm nearly out of money, so I shouldn't really. Not if I want to pay the rent this month.' I savoured these words. Talking this way made me sound normal. A few months ago I would never have imagined that I was in any way capable of living in London and paying rent.

'Go on. You only live once.' He paused. 'You know, I was going to ask if you wanted to meet
me
for lunch, but you're already busy.' He looked away. I followed his gaze. He was looking at the hood of the cooker. I looked back at his face. 'But one of these days,' he continued, 'if you're free, you could mosey on down to Tower Hill, if you were at a loose end, and we could grab a sarnie or something?'

I twiddled my hair and beamed. 'Sure.'

He left with a smile on his face. I refilled the cafetière, and decided that I would never meet Adrian for whatever a sarnie might be. The very fact that he seemed to like me made me despise him.

I decided to walk to Liz's school. It would take ages, but that was good. She always took the Tube, but today I had all morning, and so I would go on foot. I wasn't following her, because she was already there. I closed the front door behind me, and double-locked it carefully. I set off down the road, walking briskly, looking ahead, trying to be a Londoner.

In France I felt like an overgrown child with no social graces. I was a haughty, spiky girl who lived with her parents and had no friends because it was easier to keep aloof. In London it turned out that being skinny was good. I knew that already, in a way. France, after all, is the home of women who have black coffee for breakfast and cigarettes for lunch; whose thighs are as thin and frail as most people's arms, and whose clothes hang straight down from bony shoulders and hips. But in the part of France that I knew, those women were older, and they had helmet hair and three inches of make-up. I may have been thin, but I had never equated myself with those odd creatures.

Now that I had moved into a real flat, I was dressing in clothes from the magazines every day. As long as I acted as if I wasn't lost, I rarely got into strange encounters. In fact, these days, I smiled at everyone, and everyone seemed to like me, particularly men. I smiled and edged away from comments I didn't understand, which mainly came from strange men.

I tried not to feel self-conscious, because I was wearing a very short green dress, with a pair of thick black tights, a wide belt, and a beret. I felt ridiculous, but tried not to show it.
Grazia
magazine, after all, said that this outfit was 'indispensable for the Euro-chic look', and I thought that this was exactly what I wanted.

I walked with my chin up, my mouth forced into its customary smile. David was outside the Tube, and I stopped to give him a five-pound note.

'Fuck it,' he said. 'You look different. Again.'

'I know. Thanks for being nice to me.'

He looked at the money. 'Thanks for being nice to
me.
Come back any time.'

David and Adrian were my only friends. I kept walking, strutting, wishing that I'd worn my scruffy clothes, because nobody took any notice of me at all in my jeans and tatty fleece. I could blend in anywhere.

I passed a young man in a turban. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, fascinated by his headwear. I saw him look back, his eyes flicking down to my legs. He was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, and it said on the front: 'Don't freak! I'm a Sikh'. I looked at it, slightly puzzled, and looked away. Then I looked again.

He stopped.

'What?' he asked.

I looked down. 'Nothing.'

'Oh, the shirt?' he said, and smiled. 'Yeah, it is rather 2005.'

I nodded, baffled, and started walking again.

I walked through some rough areas, looking straight ahead, and approached King's Cross. Suddenly, people were everywhere. They were all around me, walking fast, hurrying to the station and away from the station. Some of them looked like they were selling drugs. Some were going to work. I passed the British Library and wished I could go in, because if I worked in there, I would be successful in some way. I saw some women who might have been prostitutes. The people were white and black and Asian, and none of them took any notice of me at all. I kept my head down and wove through the crowds, crossed the enormous, terrifying road with a lot of other people, and carried on my way. You could lose yourself in a city like this. You could be anybody. I was settling in London. I wished that I had lived in a huge city all my life.

It was an understatement to say that Liz's school was not like the International School in Bordeaux. These buildings were built from dirty red bricks, with dark slate on the roof, and high, arching windows. The grounds seemed to be dotted with boxy extra classrooms. I stood outside the gates, and stared. This was truly intimidating. I thought that lessons were still going on, because it was quiet, and I felt like an intruder. I was absolutely excluded here. As soon as I looked at the main building, my stomach clenched, and I was fifteen.

I stood out here often, and I always felt this way. Today was different. Today I was feeling good, so I was going to take it further.

The playground was concrete, with some old lines delineating some sort of games pitch that had been half worn away by children's feet. I plucked up my courage, and walked slowly in, living my own private nightmare. The moment my foot touched the concrete, I had to swallow bile that leapt into my throat. Irrationally, I was certain I was going to be consumed by the school, to be made to go to lessons, to be the odd one out in the corner of the classroom, alternately ridiculed and ignored.

I rethought my plan, and hurried back to the gates. When I got there, I wasn't sure what to do.

'Go away!' said Tom, at once. 'What the hell are you doing there? She might not like it if you jump out at her when she's at work.'

'I just want to see where she teaches,' I said sullenly. 'The inside, I mean. I won't let her see me. I'm cunning. You know that. I watch her all the time and she has no idea. I'm brilliant at it.'

'You wish. You're loopy.'

'I'm not.'

'Are too.'

'She's our sister, that's all. I need to know all about her. For the project. So that if it doesn't work out, at least I can tell Mother everything.'

Just to show him that I could pull it off, I went in. I attached my smile, tossed back my hair, and strode across the playground.

I never fitted in at school. It had not worked for me. I had never known what to say. Occasionally someone gave me a chance, or a new girl attached herself to me before she knew better. When this happened, I would try my best to hang on to the potential friend, but it never worked. They always hurried off to join the crowd, and laughed about me from a distance. Everyone else had the indefinable quality that I lacked. I had no idea what it was. Still, apparently these days I seemed to be better at getting away with it.

School, to me, meant being alone and trying to pretend it was because I was a loner. Tom never had my problems. He had hundreds of friends. Everyone wanted to be with him, to be in his gang. He hardly even seemed to notice his popularity. He took it for granted. He had also never mentioned the fact that I existed outside all the little groups of friends in my year. I wanted him to think that I preferred my own company. I needed him to believe that I was that way because I was bored by the rest of them, with their fashions and their cliques. I never knew whether he believed it, or whether he could see through me. I had no idea whether he knew that I was desperate to be friends with the rest of them, but that I could never find the right words to say.

Now, all of a sudden, I was back at school. Not only that, but I was probably trespassing.

A black boy came out of a side door, and sloped across the playground. He looked around, furtively. I looked straight ahead and walked more purposefully towards what looked like the main entrance. I knew I was shaking, and thrust my hands into my big pockets to hide my fear.

'All right?' asked the boy. I looked over to him. He was about ten metres away from me, and had pulled his hood aside to look at me. I nodded.

'Yes, thanks,' I answered, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice.

He smiled a slow smile. 'You a teacher then?' he demanded, looking me up and down. I was conscious of my hemline.

I shook my head. 'No. Well, probably not.' I improvised. 'I might get some work as a French assistant.'

He laughed. 'Yeah? First sexy Sandrine and then you? I like their methods, I have to say. I like their methods.'

I knew I shouldn't say it, but I did anyway. 'Do you know Miss Greene?' I asked primly.

He was looking at me hard, and I was uncomfortable. He must have been at least three years younger than I was, but he was a lot bigger.

'Lizzy Greene?' he asked. 'Yeah. I know her.'

'You like her?' I said, trying to copy his London accent. 'Is she ...' I nearly said 'cool', but suddenly feared the word would reveal me to be its opposite. 'Is she OK?' I asked, neutrally.

'Oh, she's OK. She's OK, man. You know she's having a little baby?' He looked at me. 'Hey, I bet you know who's the daddy!'

I bit my lip. 'I don't, actually. Probably her ex, though.'

'So how do you know her? Because of Sandrine?'

I nodded. 'That's right. Because of Sandrine.'

He looked back at the building, and seemed anxious to head off. 'Well, good luck, Miss. I wish I still did French, for sure.'

As I edged closer to the school, a high-pitched beeping noise began to sound. I jumped, and looked around, scared. I had been identified as an intruder. I was about to flee as fast as I could when, abruptly, people were everywhere. Pupils poured out of the doors. I forced my way in, relieved to be invisible now that there were bodies all over the place.

The floors inside were Formica tiled. The building smelt of school, of officialdom and paper and bodies. There were teenagers everywhere. I stuck to the sides of the corridors. I wanted to run away, and it was only by reminding myself that I was twenty years old and that nobody was going to corral me into a group of bitchy teenagers that I managed to keep going.

I almost walked into a miserable-looking girl who was slinking along slowly, trying, like me, to be invisible, while everyone else thundered around, their conversation echoing off the gloss-painted walls.

'Hello,' I said, recognising a fellow outcast. 'Where's the staffroom, please?' I wondered, as I said it, what I was doing.

The girl looked at me for a moment. She had attempted to put on make-up, but her mouth just looked as if she had been drinking red wine. Her skin was white and pasty, and she needed to wash her hair. Her shoulders slumped as she considered my question. After a few seconds she seemed to reach a decision.

'That way,' she whispered, pointing in the direction I was already going.

'Just that way?' I asked. She could have been me, five years ago. Looking at her made me feel confident. She could barely bring herself to speak. 'Or do I have to go anywhere when I reach "that way"?'

'Get to the front hall,' she muttered, looking down at her shoes. 'Door on the left.'

'Thanks. That's really helpful.'

'Yeah, sure.'

'I mean it.'

'Right.'

'Really.'

'Mmmm.'

She sidled off, looking miserable. I was filled with a new energy. This was exciting. I was in Liz's world and every detail of it mattered. I looked around, drinking in everything about Liz's day-to-day life. She walked in these corridors. The danger of being there thrilled me.

I was alert as I edged along the corridor. I found the 'front hall', checked it from round the corner like somebody in a detective thriller, and established that it was free of Liz.

The children I passed were looking at me, and I knew I hadn't dressed properly. I should have tried to look sensible. As it was, my bottom was almost on display, and everyone stopped to stare, to wonder who had come to school without a skirt on.

I could see a heavy wooden door with a sign saying 'Staffroom' on it.

I strode over, feeling weirdly invincible, and raised my hand to knock. Then I lowered it. I had no idea why I was here. If Liz saw me, she would freak out. She would scream at me again. I was ready to run. For some reason, though, I stayed.

Teachers rushed past, in and out of the staffroom, and none of them even looked at me. I stood to one side and watched. It was good to know where my sister was, when she was at school. After a few minutes, a slim black woman wearing a huge cardigan and a long floral skirt stopped next to me, with a little frown.

'Can I help you?' she asked, clearly unable to place me as either teacher or pupil.

I was scared, yet grateful. 'Um, I'm not sure,' I said, rolling back on to my heels. 'I'm looking for—' I stopped myself. 'Sandrine,' I substituted, at the last moment.

She peered at me, looking curious. 'Are you? Don't look so worried. I think Sandrine's around. Are you a friend?'

'Not exactly.' I was mortified that she thought I looked scared. Hurriedly, I smiled. 'A kind of friend of a friend, I suppose.' I made a leap of faith. 'Sandrine teaches French, doesn't she?'

The woman frowned again. 'Yes.'

'Well, I'm French. I wondered if she might need a language assistant or something.'

'You don't sound French.' She looked me up and down. I was cripplingly aware of how short my dress was, and how tight. 'You look it, though.'

'I'm bilingual. French father, British mother.'

At this, she smiled. 'Impressive. So you're not a sixth former? I must admit, that's what I thought when I saw you. I'm Kathy. Maths teacher. I'm a friend of Sandrine's. She hasn't got the budget for an assistant, and it's not up to her, anyway. But come on in and we'll have a look around for her.'