and silence. Throughout my childhood, watching her breakdowns re-occur, they had left me feeling perpetually guilty, like I had to compensate for my birth having irrevocably altered her life.
For an hour that morning I stood under the shower, scrubbing at my flesh, but I didn’t feel so much soiled by Luke as by myself. I felt caught between conflicting emotions, repulsed by what had happened, yet reliving the excitement of that hotel. I had been so drunk that the memories now held the same dreamlike quality as standing on that railway bridge with my mother.
I honestly believed I’d never see Luke again, or if I did it would be by chance in a glimpse on some crowded escalator. By then he would just be a vaguely familiar face puzzling me until I remembered and turned away. I had been crazy to allow myself to get so drunk. I said nothing to Roxy and Honor and I knew Garth said little about what happened to him. But Honor claimed he was more withdrawn these days as he came and left at odd hours.
Fragments of Luke’s character kept coming back to me during the following week, details which didn’t fit together so that it seemed I was remembering two distinct personalities. He’d been a shark certainly, but maybe that was the secret of sharks – not surface confidence but how they manoeuvred you into believing you alone had glimpsed the vulnerablity beneath their cocksure demeanour. Used cars, wall tiles or young women, we were all commodities the same techniques could be adapted to procure or sell. If I hadn’t glanced back, leaving the hotel room, I might have convinced myself this was true. But my final picture of Luke was so desolate that what stayed with me most strongly was the sense of an ache within him.
If such pain existed, it was his problem not mine. I stayed in on the following Sunday night, trying to put him out of my mind. I might have felt a grim satisfaction at him waiting in that hotel, but I’d no idea if he would show up. If I had got so drunk, how much further gone must Luke have been to risk such an encounter? There again, was I even sure his family were present? I was certain of nothing, except his first name. He hadn’t bothered to ask mine and there was no way he could trace me. Yet later that evening when the hallway was empty, I lifted the receiver off the pay phone so it couldn’t ring.
But the meal I cooked tasted lousy and there was no life in the rented film. I felt listless, crossing to the bay window to lean against the glass and gaze past the narrow garden at the street. I wondered if he was waiting, still hoping I might come. I didn’t know if I wanted him to be there. I had crept downstairs too often as a teenager to check that the phone was working, after giving my number and trust away, to now feel any qualms about the fake lives I spun for other men.
This was different though. I had made no promises to Luke and it seemed crazy to contemplate such a risk again. But I was stung by an irrational guilt, even though I remembered his fingers toying with my neck. Luke was too old for me and I didn’t mess with married men. I was ashamed of the way I’d looked at his wife. It wasn’t her fault if she embodied Gran’s dreams. But it was her happiness which I had most resented, for reminding me of how empty my life seemed.
I didn’t feel like being alone now, yet I didn’t fancy Roxy and Honor’s wildness either. I didn’t know what I wanted, although I never had and didn’t see why I had to. I had sworn that my life would never be black and white or narrowed down to a single job or man. But, as I stepped back to stare at the reflection of myself and the room in the window, my flat looked so shabby and the life I half-led within it utterly shallow. Was this how I really wanted to live? Hungry for two days every week while waiting for the giro, occasionally waitressing or taking temporary jobs in offices I couldn’t wait to escape from? Was I living for myself or still playing games? I remembered as a child the thrill of independence I had felt every time I disappointed their expectations. When I’d left home there was nowhere I hadn’t planned to visit, a street-wise girl travelling alone with no ties. Thirteen miles in thirteen months was nothing to be proud of. The flat was cold. The rented video fizzled out and now, with a click, began to rewind itself. I decided to return it. I knew it could have waited until tomorrow but it was an excuse to escape from that room.
I kept walking after taking the film back, turning down streets I would normally never take after dark. The pubs were packed with drinkers as rock music blared from upstairs windows. It was almost closing time. Twice I nearly went into a bar and then stopped myself. It wasn’t like me to lack the confidence to venture somewhere alone, but tonight I felt unable to adopt a mask. A taxi passed, braking hard to take the corner. There were shops covered by steel shutters except for an Indian restaurant with no customers. I sensed the waiter eyeing me from the lit doorway. I walked quicker to escape his gaze and turned left, intending to circle back towards my flat. But when I got down the street I found it was a cul-de-sac. The last streetlight was a flickering blue as the bulb spluttered out. There was a walled laneway, dividing the street from the high rise flats beyond it.
I knew I should turn back, but I didn’t want to admit that I was scared. I was half way down the lane when a youth jumped from the wall. He crouched as he landed, twenty feet from me, then leaned against the wall. That old fear came back from when I was eleven, almost paralysing me, but I managed to walk on. I had never found this area violent, but that was because I knew, with almost a local’s instinct, where not to walk. The lane was so narrow I’d have to brush against the youth to get past. He watched me approach, his face betraying nothing. In a few seconds I could be fighting for my life, yet I felt nothing for my would-be attacker. He was as much an anonymous piece of flesh to me as I was to him. At that moment all I felt was anger against myself for being stupid enough to be here. The youth’s fingers were clenched, but I couldn’t decide if they held anything. I could see his teeth as I drew close. It was like encountering a loose dog, not knowing how he would react. I fought against myself so he wouldn’t smell my fear.
I was face to face with him now, not knowing if it was more dangerous to ignore his gaze or stare back. I’d worked the key-ring in my pocket around my knuckle so that when I hit him the keys might rip his cheek. I passed, our jackets briefly touching. I smelt his sour breath and had a sense that I could almost hear his heart. He didn’t move a muscle. Then I was beyond him, one yard, two yards, three, still waiting for his arm to grip my neck, trying to prevent myself shaking and restrain my legs from running. I reached the laneway’s end. The street ahead was empty. At the top I saw people on the main road as the pubs closed. Still I was afraid to look back. I got half way up the street before allowing myself to run. I couldn’t stop the images rushing in on me about what might have happened; the waste ground beyond the wall, a boiler house with its smashed door, the starless triangle of sky I might have glimpsed as my dying vision.
When I reached the main road I kept running, controlling an urge to scream. The youth hadn’t raised a finger. He had passively savoured his power to cause terror. I wasn’t furious with myself now but with him, the sick prick getting his kicks from fear. For eleven years I had run from such memories. Now I almost wanted him to have given me an excuse to rip his flesh with my key-ring. Yet I couldn’t remember his face, though it was only moments since our encounter. It was Luke’s face I kept seeing, Luke whom I resented for distracting my judgement until I was like a tourist, floundering about with every scrap of street sense gone.
There were pages of tile shops in the Yellow Pages. I convinced myself that curiosity made me scan them the following Monday, searching for Irish sounding names. The Irish ghettos around Kilburn seemed an obvious place to start. I made a dozen calls, listening to each voice say ‘Hello?’ before asking if Luke was there. Each one said that no Luke worked there and I hung up disappointed, although if they’d asked me to hold for Luke I would have only waited to hear his voice before putting the phone down. I had nothing to say to him. I just felt that planting a surname and banal workplace on Luke would help diminish him in my mind.
On Tuesday morning I dumped the Yellow Pages in a street bin. I had stood Luke up, yet for the previous two days I’d thought of nothing except him. These were danger signs. If I wasn’t careful this obsession could grow. I phoned an employment agency where I sometimes got office work. They had a temporary position, covering for somebody who was sick in Wilkinson’s pharmaceutical importers near Elephant and Castle.
I’d worked there before and had even turned down a permanent job with them. It was a legacy of childhood afternoons in Grandad Pete’s chemist