goes again. ‘You know, about eating.’
‘Oh, right, yeah,’ I said, tearing my eyes away from the bag. ‘I think so. You know best, Q, but she doesn’t seem right.’
‘Yeah,’ he goes. ‘Look, don’t worry about it. Sometimes she just forgets. When she’s stressed, you know.’
‘Okay, thanks, mate.’ I had a swig at my can of Coke and sat up a bit. ‘You off out tonight?’ I asked, because I really wanted to be nice to him all of a sudden because I couldn’t help thinking again that it was lucky we had him around.
‘Yep,’ he goes, big smile, ‘I’m off to this thing at Hector’s club – it’s champagne baths and a pool party. You’ve met Hector, haven’t you?’
I had met Hector as it goes, and it was hard to forget because the bloke was wearing tweed chaps when I’d made his acquaintance. Nice fella actually, bare arse aside. Well, Quin was off then on some spiel and he was rubbing his hands together and then holding them out wide and chortling away to himself, and I was glad I’d tuned out to be honest because who knows what he was describing the length of, you never could be sure with Quin – one minute he’d be telling you he was nipping down the shop for some of the special clove cigarettes he was always puffing, and the next he was on about a party he’d been to where they’d all snorted ket off the host’s cock. He was that kind of kid. It might seem strange that the sort of guy who plonked his tubby little bod in Bolly every weekend spent the rest of his time kipping on a My Little Pony duvet in our front room and looking out for Saffy, but underneath all his frilly shirts and dirty stories I was just properly learning that he had the biggest heart going.
So he toddled off out and I got up and had a quick look around for Saf, just in case she’d heard that little conversation cos that’d be the end of it if she thought we were talking about her. She was in the bathroom in the shower, and that wasn’t all that surprising cos that was where she always ended up, always in there buffing and scrubbing and rinsing until the cows came home. I even bought her a little shower radio for her birthday the year before, this little blue fish that suckered on there and warbled out tunes right next to your ear. It was like the best present she’d ever had, her eyes went all shiny and she stretched right up on tippytoes and gave me the biggest hug in the world. Shot myself in the foot there really, because there was no getting her out after that, songs tinkling out and pennies trickling away down the drain with the suds and the bubbles and the little grainy things from her scrubby stuff, which incidentally is not suitable for manly bits as I learnt the hard way. But at least it was only pennies not pounds trickling away cos she didn’t like her showers too hot like I did, she had them lukewarm so, you know, that was something I guess, if you liked to look for the bright side like I did.
She wouldn’t be out for ages so I wandered into the bedroom and had a bit of a half-arsed tidy-up, pulling the duvet up and picking up the glasses Saffy seemed to collect like a little magpie, and the big pot of salt that always wound up floating around out of place because she said that drinking saltwater was really good for you. I wandered back and stuck them in the sink and I was gonna wash them up but then there was no hot water cos Her Highness was still in the shower, so I just stood at the sink and looked up through the tiny jailhouse window at the top of the wall at all the feet and ankles trekking past. It was almost time for me to go to work and I was glad if I’m honest. Right about then the flat was feeling like it was shrinking, like I’d been looking at Saf’s mardy face and Quin’s side parting for too long and maybe the outside world had ended and there was nothing except us left in this flat and outside there was just people’s zombie legs wandering around, just stubs that ended at the knee marching around with bloody chips of bone sticking out the top and nowhere to go. I grabbed my work shirt off the radiator where it was steaming away happily next to a row of crispy socks and pants and shoved it on over my T-shirt and grabbed my bag off the side.
‘’Bye, Saf,’ I yelled, as I was opening the front door, and the bathroom door opened and she stuck her little blonde head out rubbing at it with a flannel.
‘Off to work,’ I said at normal volume. ‘See you later.’
‘Okay, lovepuff,’ she sang, and she blew me a kiss with her lovely pink lips. ‘Ooh, Fitz,’ she said, hurrying out after me.
‘Yes, babe,’ I said, turning back with one foot up the steps to the pavement. She was standing on the doorstep in her big beach towel hopping from one foot to the other on the cold concrete. ‘It’s Alice’s party tonight, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Have you forgotten?’
‘’Course not,’ I said. ‘I’ll come after work but you go ahead with Lilah if you want, hun, cos I might be a bit late if it’s busy.’
‘Okay.’ She smiled, giving me a little curtsy in her beach-scene beach towel. ‘See you there then, sexpants.’
‘You will,’ I said, skipping up the steps two at a time, and I turned near the top to blow her a kiss but the front door was already shutting.
Work was pants but then it was never exactly my highlight of the day. In general it wasn’t all that bad to be truthful – Cadbury, my boss, was pretty decent and it was usually busy enough that the time whizzed by, and even though it was stressful when you were in the thick of it, it was always nice when you suddenly realised your shift was over just like that. Much better than just sitting there watching the clock, which was what I was doing that day, just watching the hands tick tick round slow as you like while the only two lunchers we had were sat there sliding down the plasticky sofas and staring at the last half of the last bottle of wine they’d ordered. The pub next door was heaving but that was because it was a blokey pub and football was on. I just stood there with an order pad and sketched out some set lists. There’s something lovely about set lists – it’s like maths and art all swirled into one because the timings have to fit and you feel dead clever when you work out how to make two songs go together, when you crack the code and slip the two beats together – like the two bits on a zip – whoosh. And when people tell you something was good you feel like it’s a compliment just to you yourself and nothing to do with the songs at all. Not that many people got to hear my mixes, just sometimes at parties if I managed to shuffle my way behind the deck at the late hours when everyone starts to fidget and stare at the ceiling and think about their real lives and get restless and worried and pick at their faces and wonder how they’re going to get home, and nobody’s really listening then anyway. But I did still carry on doing them, and I’d play them to Saf sometimes, in the middle of the night when we were both magically awake, and she’d listen, lying in bed on her front, wiggling her feet with her face propped on her hands, all blue from the glow off the laptop screen and it was in those secret special moments that I thought, Nothing will ever be as brilliant as this, nobody in the world is as brilliant as her.
Cadbury was out the back and he said he was drawing up rotas but he definitely wasn’t, he was snoozing away at his desk with slinky soul playing softly in the background so we couldn’t hear his bear snores from outside the door. The two chefs were sitting outside on the damp step next to the bins smoking away and getting angry about nothing much at all, but they were just working themselves up ready for the dinner shift because the angrier you are the better chef you are or something, seemed like that’s how it worked anyway. Jenny the little waitress was in the kitchen chopping up lots of leaves for the salad garnishes ready for service, and stopping every five seconds to count the number of blue plasters on her fingers, but you couldn’t blame her really after that one time. So it was just me and the two early-peakers in the corner and I was feeling proper restless, and even trying to work out when the optimum point to drop Soulwax’s Krack was and whether putting that and Green Velvet in one set was being too much of a crowd-pleaser couldn’t keep me busy. Staring sadly out the window I watched the blokes spilling out of O’Phalley’s next door for fags and phone calls and so it must’ve been half-time.
Fate Jones was on the telly again. Her parents kept doing these press conferences with the same two fat coppers either side of them, her mum and her dad and her boyfriend, who was all greasy and spotty and tattooed and not anybody you might think would have such a pretty and giggly girlfriend. All the papers reckoned it was him that had done it so when you watched