Until It's Over (2 page)

‘She’s moving in here.’

‘We can cope,’ said Dario. ‘Can she, though? That’s the real question.’

‘I mean,’ said Miles, ‘it will be just Leah and me.’

For a moment, nobody spoke: we stared at him while his sentence hung in the air.

‘Oh,’ said Mick at last.

‘Fuck,’ said Pippa.

‘You’re chucking us out?’

‘Not like that,’ said Miles. ‘Not at once.’

‘How long?’ I asked. My face was starting to throb.

‘A few months. Three. That’s all right, isn’t it? It’ll give you time to settle in somewhere else.’

‘I was just settling in here,’ said Davy, ruefully. ‘Oh, well.’

‘You couldn’t all stay here for ever,’ said Miles.

‘Why not?’ Dario looked stricken. His freckles stood out in blotches.

‘Because things change,’ said Miles. ‘Time passes.’

‘Are you all right, Astrid?’ Davy asked. ‘You’ve gone a bit pale.’

‘I need to go to bed,’ I said. ‘Or at least lie down for a bit. I feel odd.’

Pippa and Davy levered me to my feet, hands under my elbows, making tutting noises.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Miles, wretchedly. ‘Maybe it was the wrong time.’

‘There’s never a right time for things like this,’ said Pippa. ‘Come on, Astrid, come into mine for a while. It’s one less flight of stairs to manage. I can rub Deep Heat into you, if you want.’

I shuffled up the stairs, taking them one at a time, and edged my way into Pippa’s room, which was thick with the smell of perfume. It was a large room at the front of the house. When we had first moved in, it was the designated sitting room, and didn’t seem to have been decorated since the fifties. Pippa had done nothing to change that, just filled the space with the frippery and clutter of her life. The effect was peculiarly jarring. Two walls were a grubby mustardy yellow, and another was covered with flowery wallpaper busy enough to make your head ache and peeling at the joins. The lightbulb hanging from the centre of the ceiling had a brown paper shade, split along one side. A large bay window gave out on to the street, but Pippa kept the shutters half closed so the room was in permanent shadow.

In my woozy state, the mess she had created took on an unsettling, almost hallucinatory aspect. There was a metal bed – a large single, which was particularly inappropriate to her lifestyle – with a lusciously crimson velvet bedspread; a small divan that her grandfather had left her, which was heaped with clothes, both clean and dirty; a chest with every drawer open and underwear and shirts spilling out on to the floor; a wardrobe, similarly open, in which hung her gorgeous dresses, suits, skirts and jackets; a flimsy desk buckling under the weight of papers and files. A full-length gilt mirror was propped against one wall, and at its base were piles of makeup, bottles of body lotion and tubs of face cream, ropes of necklaces, scattered earrings, a couple of belts. Yet out of this room Pippa emerged every morning fresh and immaculate, not a hair out of place, smelling of soap and Chanel No. 5.

I pushed aside a pair of knickers and lowered myself cautiously on to the bed.

‘Paracetamol?’ She reached under the bed and plucked out a box of pills. ‘With whisky?’ Like a magician, she produced a bottle from beneath the pile of clothes on the divan and brandished it.

‘Maybe not the whisky tonight.’

‘Go on.’

She shook two white tablets into my hand, then poured a couple of fingers into a tumbler and handed it across. I swallowed the paracetamol and took a sip of whisky to chase them down.

‘Shall I rub your shoulders?’ she asked.

‘I think that might hurt too much.’

‘You’re not making nearly enough fuss.’

‘Strange day,’ I said.

I could hear voices from downstairs, then the unmistakable heavy trudge of Mick making his way to his room.

‘For you, mainly,’ Pippa said. She took the tumbler from me, poured herself a generous slug of whisky and tossed it expertly down her throat. ‘Bastard,’ she added loudly.

‘Miles?’

‘Who else?’

‘I don’t know, Pippa. It had to happen some time.’

‘Bah!’

‘And if he and Leah want to live on their own together…’

‘She’s the one behind it.’

‘You make it sound like a conspiracy.’

‘Of course it’s a conspiracy. So we’re going to have to be the counter-conspiracy.’

She went on talking, saying something about the bump on my head making me too reasonable. But I didn’t really hear the words, or make out their sense. I was feeling crashingly tired. The room swam in and out of focus. I lay back against the pillows and closed my leaden lids. ‘Perhaps I’ll go to sleep here tonight,’ I said thickly.

Pippa grabbed my arm and pulled me into a sitting position. ‘Oh, no, you don’t. Not tonight, darling.’

I went crabwise up the second set of stairs, into my own room, which was white and empty after the garish mess of Pippa’s: just a small double bed, a narrow wardrobe, a chest on whose surface stood all the objects I’d dug from the garden, and a big wooden rocking-chair Dario had picked out of a skip for me and I’d covered with cushions I’d bought at Camden Market. I tugged off my tracksuit trousers, then wriggled under the duvet. But I stung and throbbed, and although I was so tired, it took me a long time to sleep. I heard sounds: the front door opening and closing; voices; someone laughing; water in the tank; footsteps on the stairs; an old house breathing.

Chapter Three

I twisted and turned and slept and fretted and twisted and turned some more, and slept and woke and saw the bright sunlight shining through the curtains and gave up the fight. Besides, my body and my bike both needed checking.

In the shower – hot, this time – I examined myself. I flexed my knees and elbows. They ached but there were no cracking or scraping sounds. I needed to get moving. I also suspected this would be a fine day to be absent from the house.

Meanwhile it was good to be on my own in the kitchen. I made myself coffee and cut a grapefruit into segments. While my porridge was cooking, I went into the garden and looked at my vegetable patch. I’d never grown anything before, except maybe mustard and cress on blotting-paper when I was small, but this year I’d suddenly decided we should grow our own food. I’d gone to a car-boot sale and bought a spade, a trowel and a watering-can so nice and bright, almost new, and cheap they had clearly been stolen from someone who had forgotten to lock their garden shed. What else are car-boot sales for in Hackney? But I’d made good use of the stolen goods, measuring out a long rectangle of overgrown land, and digging it into a well-tilled plot, whose earth was loamy and rich, and studded with old coins and bits of pottery, which I collected and put on the chest in my bedroom. It was surprisingly satisfying. I relished the ache in my back, the blisters on my palms and the dirt under my fingernails. Davy offered to help with the heavy digging but I wanted it to be all my own work. I’d planted courgettes, broad beans, lettuces, beetroot and rocket – even potatoes in their own raised bed. Everyone else in the house teased me about it, but already sturdy shoots were appearing. Almost every morning and evening, I went to look at them. This morning, I had been thinking that next year I should plant sweetcorn as well, and maybe some butternut squash for soups – until I remembered that next year I wouldn’t be here. It was only then I realized that I wouldn’t be here this year, either, to harvest the vegetables I had tended so carefully. Miles and Leah would be picking them instead, enjoying the fruits of my labour.

I was on my second mug when Pippa came into the kitchen. She was dressed for the office in a soft grey suit and a white shirt. And she wasn’t alone. A man in black trousers, a flowery shirt and leather jacket came in with the familiar mixture of sheepishness and pride you see in men in the morning. She introduced him as Jeff. He sat across the table from me and, asking if it was all right, helped himself to coffee.

I was too dumbfounded to answer. Pippa was amazing. How had she done it? Where had she produced him from? I had left her at whatever time it was last night, sitting in her room. And yet somewhere, somehow, in the middle of the night, she had found this man and smuggled him into her bed.

‘Hi, Jeff,’ I said, and disintegrated into a sort of stammer. ‘How… where did you…?’

‘We’d arranged to meet for a drink,’ said Pippa, cheerfully, ‘so I said he might as well come over here. And by then it was so late that, well, you know…’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Pippa, I wanted to ask you a professional question.’

‘What?’

‘Can Miles actually, legally, throw us out? Aren’t we sitting tenants?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘Aren’t you a lawyer?’

‘Are you a lawyer?’ said Jeff.

‘Yes, sweetie,’ said Pippa. ‘Hurry and finish your coffee.’ She glanced back at me. ‘That doesn’t mean I know anything. I’ll look it up or ask someone. But don’t get lawyers involved. That’s the only thing I’ve learned.’

I nodded to Pippa and said goodbye politely to Jeff, suspecting I would never see him again. I rang Campbell at the office, and he said there would be no problem in borrowing a bike for a few days. I’d just have to pick it up from the office in Clerkenwell. Consequently, that morning I must have been the only bike messenger in London who didn’t go to work on a bike. Instead I sat on the tube in tight Lycra shorts and my fluorescent yellow top, with my helmet on my lap. I couldn’t have looked more ludicrous if I’d been dressed in jodhpurs and a scarlet coat.

I hardly ever went into the office. It was really nothing more than a cubby-hole where Campbell and his assistant, Becks, took orders and phoned the riders, but it was amazingly squalid, all cardboard boxes, unwashed coffee cups and unfiled files.

‘Lovers’ tiff?’ said Campbell, as I walked into the office.

‘Car door,’ I said.

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

I was less all right when I saw the bike he was lending me. Campbell saw my dubious expression. ‘It’s served me well, that bike,’ he said.

‘At least it’s not going to get stolen,’ I muttered. ‘So, what’s up first?’

He looked at his clipboard. ‘Fancy Wardour Street to Camden Town?’

‘All I fancy is you, Campbell,’ I said, taking the piece of paper he was holding out. ‘Now that I’ve seen the state of the office, I must remember to come in less often. See you at the pub later, maybe.’

It was a lovely day, the sort that made up for January, when you got wet and numb and it was dark at four o’clock, and August, when you seemed to breathe nothing but heat and car fumes. It was sunny but with a chill, and there wasn’t too much traffic and I felt happy, even if I didn’t know why. I darted across the map of London in straight lines. After Camden Town I went from Charlotte Street to Maida Vale, then from Soho to London Bridge. On the way back I spent too much money on an exotic sandwich at Borough Market. Then it was over the river to Old Street and thence in a long straight line to Notting Hill Gate. Cycling back into town, I stopped in St James’s Park, ate my sandwich and drank a bottle of water. And so back to criss-crossing London, in and out of the photographic labs, advertising companies, editing suites, solicitors’, and offices I had been in and out of for months without knowing, or needing to know, exactly what they did.

Some days it felt like I was dragging heavy weights behind the bike, but not today. The accident had clearly done me no lasting damage. My aching limbs gradually loosened up and by the evening I’d done sixty or seventy miles and I didn’t even feel tired, just a pleasant ache in my calves and thighs. On the way home I stopped off at the Horse and Jockey. The pub was strictly for the cycle messengers. The motorbike messengers were large, bearded and male: they dressed in black leather and met up at the Crown just south of Oxford Street. They congregated on the pavement and whistled at women walking past and talked about cam shafts, or whatever it was that motorcycles were made of.

We cycle messengers saw each other as a more sensitive breed. We were certainly a bloody sight healthier, those of us who survived. When I cycled up, there was a small cheer from the people who were already there, clutching their bottles of beer. They gathered round to inspect my bruises and grazes and to comment that they were really nothing special. Then we got down to the more serious business. We talked about employment prospects, we gossiped and, above all, we slagged off the clients. We depended on them but that didn’t mean we had to respect them. Most of the job was company work, taking envelopes from office to office, but several families had accounts with us and some of them were so rich, or at least so much richer than we were, that they thought nothing of picking up the phone to summon one of us. There was an unofficial competition about the most ludicrous request. I’d once gone on successive days to deliver a forgotten packed lunch from Primrose Hill to a girls’ prep school in the West End. One messenger claimed he’d cycled to Notting Hill Gate in the rain to collect an umbrella and deliver it to a woman standing outside Fortnum & Mason. The job also gave us a chance to gawp inside some of these houses. One of the messengers said he was going to start a game: you’d get five points for a private cinema, ten for a fountain, fifty for an indoor swimming-pool.

Just as a messenger called Danny was telling me, quite falsely, about a client who fancied him, I was saved by my phone ringing. It was Davy.

‘I’m at the Jockey,’ I said. ‘Want to meet up?’

The pub was a handy place to rendezvous in the middle of town and Pippa or Davy or Owen would occasionally join me there and attempt to blend in with the lithe, suntanned, lightly clad, generally god-like bodies of us messengers.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m at home. Maybe you should come back.’

‘Is anything wrong?’

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Not really. Nothing to do with us. But dramatic.’

I cycled home slowly, enjoying the amber light and the cooling air against my glowing skin. As I steered into Maitland Road, I was thinking that the one thing I mustn’t do was have another stupid accident in my own road when I almost ran into a police car at the same spot where I had hit the car on the previous day. An area of pavement a few houses down from ours was taped off. Several policemen and -women were bustling around busily. One was standing by the car looking bored.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘Move on, please, love,’ he said.

‘It’s just that I live in the street.’

‘It’s all over.’

‘What’s all –?’

‘Just move on.’

I felt reluctant. Something had happened almost exactly where I lived and I wanted to know about it, but the officer stared at me and I couldn’t think of an excuse so I just pushed my bike along the pavement to our house.

Dario was up a ladder in the hallway painting the rose round the light. I leaned Campbell’s bike against the wall. ‘Someone’s going to fall over that,’ he said.

‘It’s just for today,’ I said. ‘What’s going on outside?’

‘There were more police a couple of hours ago,’ he said. ‘There were cars and an ambulance.’

‘What happened?’

‘I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been out. I heard that someone had been robbed.’

‘Murdered,’ said a voice behind me.

I turned round. It was Mick. ‘Murdered?’ I said. ‘No! What happened?’

‘Someone was being robbed in the street and they got killed. They must have tried to resist. Fucking idiot.’

Dario grinned down at me. ‘Yesterday Astrid crashes into a car, today someone gets murdered. This area’s getting dangerous.’

‘Lucky we’re getting evicted then, isn’t it?’ I said, and then I looked up at Dario suspiciously. ‘How long have you been doing the house up?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘Were you in on Miles’s plan?’

‘Me?’ he said. ‘What would I have to gain from that?’

‘I wouldn’t like to think how your twisted mind works,’ I said.