Little Friends Read online

  Izzy’s face becomes thoughtful. No one waits with her by the entrance to the school lane where Melissa finds her at the end of the day, slumped against the railings by herself. Friends never last. The only person she goes to the cinema or shopping with is her father; she must yearn for friends of her own.

  ‘How much will you give me if I go?’

  ‘How much?’ Melissa is confused.

  ‘As in a hundred pounds,’ Izzy replies impatiently.

  It’s impossible for her daughter to look anything other than beautiful, the thick fair hair, the fierce blue stare, the way she stands on long legs as graceful as a colt; strong bodied. Dyslexia is better than anorexia. Funny how flowery they both sound, like girls’ names, pretty girls.

  ‘Fifty.’

  Everything comes with a cost. Izzy’s cooperation is cheap at the price; she’s so angry these days. It’s just frustration, the teachers say, common with dyslexia, and then there’s her age of course. They organized a tutor and extra lessons in school, but nothing has worked so far. At the same time that these thoughts run through her mind, others are speeding beneath them, like traffic on motorways that twist one under another. Izzy’s right; Melissa can finish her work if her daughter is occupied, she can even fit in a run.

  Izzy smiles as though she can read her mother’s mind; she probably can. ‘Done,’ she says, letting the cushion drop to the floor.

  ‘They live in College Road; it’ll take us ten minutes to walk there,’ Melissa tells her. They could chat. Izzy might open up on the way. She can see them now, like those advertisements for mini-breaks; a mother and daughter making their way through a park with flowers in the background, linking arms and laughing, special bonding time.

  ‘Walk?’ Izzy sounds horrified.

  ‘Okay, I’ll pop you over in the car.’ Melissa steps forward and holds her daughter tightly for a few moments, inhaling the clean scent of her hair. Izzy’s agreed to go, that’s the main thing – she won’t push for anything else.

  ‘Drop me off before we get to their house, though,’ Izzy warns, stepping back. ‘It’s not like I’m some little kid who needs to be handed over at the door.’

  Melissa nods obediently and retreats to the kitchen; she’ll catch up with Eve when she collects Izzy after the lesson.

  The kitchen is in the basement of the house, next to the gym and newly equipped. The grey concrete work surfaces are pristine, slatted pantry doors hide a small room of shelves. The dark slab of marble topping the island was specially quarried, an immense fridge-freezer hums quietly in the corner. Paul stores the old stuff in a shed; he prefers new things. He’s always updating something in the kitchen, the units or one of the machines. It’s important for an architect to be at the cutting edge of design, he says. He shows clients around their house from time to time. Double doors at the back lead to the courtyard and beyond that to the curving walls of the landscaped garden.

  A dark-skinned young woman in ankle-length black is washing the floor and humming a tune under her breath; her symmetrical features are framed by a hijab. The kitten, Venus, jumps out of the way, toying with the mop and shaking her white paws. Lina comes from Syria; she worked for colleagues of Paul before, other architects who moved to America. Her references were excellent. When Melly’s interior design business took off, they needed someone to look after the house and cook. Lina sleeps in their converted loft; it’s hard to remember how they managed without her. She’s probably in her early twenties, though it’s impossible to tell exactly with the clothes and the make-up she always wears. Paul pays her in cash, calling her up to his office every Saturday. She seems content. Lina looks up and gives a solemn wave; Melissa smiles, warmed. She feels close to her silent little maid, closer than to her daughter sometimes. They share more time together; she tells Lina her thoughts. Last week she found her working late, cleaning cupboards. Paul was away. She had sat at the table with a glass of wine, allowing herself to chatter. Lina listened and for a brief moment rested her hand on Melissa’s shoulder. She’s not quite sure how much Lina understands; she hardly talks but she listens closely, like an ally. Her presence feels gentle, healing even, though Paul would laugh at the notion.

  ‘It looks perfect.’ She glances around the shining kitchen. ‘Thank you, sweetie; did you remember the flowers?’

  Lina nods. She squeezes out the mop and puts the bucket in the pantry; she remembers everything. The white lilies, the special scentless kind Paul prefers, will be delivered later.

  ‘Dinner?’

  Lina nods again. The daube of beef, his favourite, will be ready in the fridge, beautifully cooked.

  ‘You’re an angel. I literally cannot remember how we coped before you came.’ She wants to hug Lina but doesn’t quite dare.

  A red stain creeps into Lina’s cheeks. She sets out cereal and bowls on the island, adds cutlery, and a little vase of flowers.

  ‘Take the day off,’ Melissa says impulsively. ‘Izzy will be out and I intend to work. Everything’s ready for Paul. You deserve a break.’

  Lina has a boyfriend, a thick-set, bearded man who looks older than her, a little surly. He waits outside the house in the evenings; perhaps they could spend the day together. Lina bows her head in acknowledgement. Melissa returns to the sitting room; Izzy is still glued to her laptop. ‘Here’s Venus come to see you. I’m going to catch up on work till it’s time to go.’ She tumbles the kitten on to her daughter’s lap; Izzy’s hand closes round the soft little ears.

  Grace

  ‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’

  Grace pushes against the glass; the jammed window gives way on the third attempt, her hand scraping on the frame. She jumps off the bathroom stool and holds the bleeding palm under cold water which seeps up her arm, soaking the new white shirt, the neat black suit.

  ‘Fuck.’

  Receptionists should be immaculate, but there’s no time to change and nothing to change into. She trips over Martin’s shoes left in the doorway of the main room.

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  She pulls the curtains back; the sun floods into the room. The sky looks flawless, that deceptive English blue. You can see a long way from the thirteenth floor. Thirteen was unlucky, Martin had worried; beggars can’t be choosers she’d shot back. Charley likes it. She watches foxes on the allotments from here, sleek shapes slipping by the rows of beans in the dusk. Blake wants an allotment but he’d need help and there wouldn’t be time; there’s ten minutes left some nights, half an hour if she’s lucky – just enough time to slip the red notebook from its hiding place on the top shelf under the pile of cookbooks she bought from Zimbabwe. She writes at night in secret, battling tiredness.

  A muffled groan comes from the sofa. Martin is lying flat out with a cushion over his head. An ashtray brims beside him, three empty beer bottles on the table, papers on the floor. When she narrows her eyes, his outline becomes a sleeping animal, a beast from the plains, lifeless on the back of her grandfather’s lorry, chugging into the village at sun-up, blood dripping on the dust. Cocks crowing. Smoke from early fires. Miles and years away. Before success, before failure. Somewhere inside her husband is a young student with burning eyes, the English boy she’d followed over the sea. In the flat above a door slams as the tenants leave for work; that’s exactly how it began for them all those years ago, with the sound of a door slamming.

  It had been late; most of the drinkers had already lurched out into the potholed streets of Harare. Beneath a layer of smoke, the tables were littered with empty glasses. The door to the bar banged open against the wall then slammed shut, followed by footsteps and the noise of something heavy being dumped on the counter.

  ‘We’re closed.’ Her back had been to the bar, sorting the till.

  ‘Oh gosh. Just my luck. Any chance at all of a glass of water?’

  The voice of the radio: white, old Rhodesian, upper class, everything her grandparents hated. She turned to bawl him out, but the mud-splashed face above the orange rucksack was grinning at
her, his eyes more alive than any she’d seen in here or anywhere else for that matter. She retrieved a cold beer from the fridge and handed it over. ‘On the house,’ she said. ‘Be quick.’ She came back in five minutes. ‘Finished?’

  ‘What’s the rush?’ He handed her the empty bottle.

  ‘Like I said, we’re closed.’ Then, because he was still smiling, because his rucksack was spilling books, she added, ‘I’ve got revision waiting.’

  ‘For?’

  ‘English A level, next week.’

  ‘Ah.’ He pulled out a book from the rucksack and put it down. Great Expectations. ‘Have you read it?’ A chat-up line, something to keep her there, he told her later. She’d loved that book so she nodded. He slapped down Middlemarch, she nodded again. They’d sat outside in the car park afterwards; he was reading English at Oxford, he told her, in his final year. They talked till dawn about the books they’d read, about their secret dreams of writing. The sun had come up hot and clear like today, the future had glittered like the cars parked beside them.

  She touches the greying hair and turns away, giving him five more minutes of sleep. The kids are sprawled, eyes shut, mouths open, arms spread. After yesterday’s shift she’d come home to them sitting with glazed expressions in front of the television, sated with pizza and chips. Martin’s arms had been around each child, pretending it was a treat, not laziness.

  Charley wakes at her touch and slips from the bed, a neat rush of smooth limbs. Blake falls out like a puppy, growling as he hits the ground. They know better than to argue. They fill the bathroom, elbowing each other; it’s hard to imagine that these jostling kids will grow into their names: Charley for Charlotte Brontë, her choice; Blake for William, Martin’s. She pushes them into the kitchen, watches again as they down milk, juice, Weetos.

  ‘Do I have to go?’ That whine, the hunched shoulders; she buries a fist into his Afro and pulls gently, forcing his face up.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  She doesn’t want to say it all over again: that a child of eleven should be writing better than his sister of nine, that he should be reading fluently by now. It’s not his fault that he’s way behind, but he has to try. She’s paid for the course that she found on Facebook, a nominal sum but hard-earned all the same.

  ‘Because.’ She loosens her grip and jerks her thumb at the door. ‘Dress.’

  ‘Can I go?’ Charley shoves Blake with her shoulder, he kicks back. Grace holds them apart.

  ‘Please.’ A drawn-out whine from Charley, pulling on her hand.

  ‘You can collect him later, with Dad.’

  ‘They’ve a puppy, you said. And donkeys.’

  ‘I’ve paid her to teach Blake, not babysit you.’

  ‘What about her other kids? You said there’s a toddler and a little girl. I could help look after them. I’m good with kids, Miss Howard told you.’

  Charley helps out with the younger children in the late-stay room after lessons. She’s right, the teacher has mentioned she’s efficient for nine, very kind, especially to the youngest ones. Grace studies the hope in her daughter’s wide brown eyes. ‘I’ll put it to Eve, but she’s probably made other arrangements by now. Stay in the car when I ask, okay? I don’t want you twisting her arm.’

  Charley makes a victory fist.

  ‘Get dressed now,’ Grace tells them both.

  Martin has pulled himself upright on the sofa; he yawns, his eyes still closed.

  ‘We’re off in a minute. Charley’s coming with us, but don’t leave yet; I may have to drop her back with you.’

  ‘Wow.’ His eyes snap open, his face looks wider when he smiles. ‘The chance of a day to myself. I can go to the library. Chapter seven’s a bitch.’ He fumbles for his watch.

  Writing. Code for cigarettes, coffee, reading the paper. Films in the afternoon, lunches in the pub. Her writing means chewing paper to stay awake, grinding out words, exhaustion the next day. She picks up Blake’s shirt from the floor, his scattered socks, and bundles them into the washing machine.

  ‘I am grateful.’ He’s watching her. ‘You do know that, don’t you?’

  Gratitude is easy; it doesn’t cost much. He fell in love with her energy, but he’s using it up. She opens the giant Quality Street tin that sits on the draining board behind the kettle and takes ten pounds for parking from the deep pool of saved coins and puts them in her purse, struggling with the broken zip on her bag.

  ‘You jolly well should be grateful,’ she tells him. ‘My turn next.’

  He smiles, the special melting smile, and kisses her; she softens, kissing him back.

  ‘Yuck.’ Charley looks away.

  While Martin hugs the kids goodbye, Grace reaches for her red notebook from the shelf and slips it into her bag. The hotel allows thirty minutes for lunch most days, ten more if it’s quiet; useful writing time.

  They wait for the lift on the narrow landing outside, Blake sighing and kicking his feet against the wall. The lift smells of vomit and piss, denser in the stairwell. The warden should organize a cleaner. Grace glimpses her sometimes, putting rubbish in the bins; a large woman with red hair and bottle glasses who rarely emerges from her ground-floor flat. She greets her politely on those occasions, receiving a grunt in reply; their warden’s the kind who seems to resent her tenants.

  The children follow Grace outside. The patch of grass by the car park glistens with discarded bottles; her shirt feels sticky already. The usual four adolescents are bunched in a group by the rubbish bins, thin boys waiting for drugs. A new one has joined them today, older, taller. The green soles of his trainers flash as he twists, walks, turns and starts again; head down and hooded, seventeen at a guess, scrawny, already scarred. He flicks a cigarette butt her way and she feels a faint crackle of fear. It’s the way he looks at her, half grinning as though biding his time. Grace’s father had been a veteran of the Second Chimurenga in Zimbabwe. He had fought with ZANLA against the ruling whites and witnessed the atrocities his people suffered; she grew up on his stories. It took her a while to convince her family that Martin was different, that she would be safe with him. She didn’t tell them about the UKIP graffiti on the walls of the flats when they moved in; she had been pregnant with Blake at the time and they needed a home, it was all they could afford. She watches her kids getting into the car and gets in herself, heart thumping. She pulls out and turns on the radio for the children. Her story starts up again, running below the music like a bright river.

  Poppy lies on her bed, watching the dust jumping in the light. The minutes drag already. There is literally nothing to do. She closes her eyes. Ash is crying; Sorrel is complaining in a whiny voice because Poppy won’t let her on to her bed. The smell of hot bread hanging in the house makes her feel like vomiting. She wants to tell her mother to stop with the fucking baking. She wants to walk out of the room and down the stairs and out to another house, a normal family where the kids are allowed screen time and junk food and normal bread and they don’t have to look after their brother or sister or play games in the garden, like kids in a fucking fairy tale. Everyone at school thinks she’s an idiot. Izzy – the girl coming this morning – will think she’s stupid when they start their lessons together. She’ll arrive any minute and it’ll be embarrassing. Her mother’s laugh is embarrassing, like she’s escaped from some mental hospital. She’s not even wearing a bra today, Izzy will think it’s gross. Poppy rolls over on to her stomach, squashing the croissant. She covers her ears to block out Ash and her whiney little sister. She wishes she had some of those earphones that cancel out noise. She’d cancel out her whole family if she could.

  Blake stares out of the car window. When they pass the park, some of his mates are playing football already. He doesn’t want to go to special lessons for stupid people; if he can’t do the work he’ll look even more stupid. He puts his legs up on the back seat to the halfway mark. Charley has her legs up too, but she’s over the mark so he kicks her and she laughs. He kicks harder
and she goes on laughing; that’s exactly what the whole day will be like.

  Izzy chooses the jeans with rips; she wants to look cool but not like she cares. Through her bedroom window she can see her mother running in and out to the car, putting stuff in, yelling for her. She’s wearing the scarf again; the bloody scarf. Izzy feels anger rising up hard and hot. She shoves her feet into her oldest sneakers and saunters down, purposely slow.

  2. May

  Eve

  ‘Oh hi, you must be Martin. Grace said you’d be picking up. Charley and Blake are outside with the others. They needed a break, they’ve worked so hard. My son’s napping so this is a good moment. Gosh, it’s hot, I hadn’t realized. They say it’s going to be a barbecue summer.’

  For God’s shut up, calm down. He’s just a man, an ordinary bloke. Invite him in.

  ‘Sorry, do come in.’

  He seems shy for someone so well known, hovering at the doorway, his head ducked like a boy’s. He towers over her but whereas Igor’s height seems brutish, this man’s size appeals. He’s rumpled like her father was, glasses on his head, the same kind of soft cotton shirt rolled to the elbows. That familiar tobacco smell. He puts the pile of books he’s carrying on the table, slips off his jacket and smiles round at the room as if he were at home. She’s imagined his home often: Martin Cowan, Booker winner. A manuscript spread out on a table in a high-ceilinged loft, balls of paper scrunched on the floor. His wife hovering in the background, bringing tea, hushing the children, shepherding them away. She adds cigarette butts overflowing in a saucer, no, a heavy ashtray, made of African malachite. He spent time in Zimbabwe, she’s read, for the book, the famous one. He gave away half his prize money to the school that inspired it.

  ‘Tea? The children made cakes.’

  ‘Now how could I resist a homemade cake?’

  He wanders round looking at the books on the shelves. She pours tea and he sits down with a little sigh; she needn’t have worried. He seems content, relaxed even. She sneaks a glance; he has greying hair straggling over his collar; a good nose, beaked; brown eyes that gleam from little folds of skin. He’s watching her as if waiting; should she tell him how much she loves his book? She sits opposite, suddenly tongue-tied.