the window, cawing noisily. Kate woke with a start, her eyes fixed at once on his. After a second or two she smiled and cupping Frank’s face, drew him towards her and kissed him. Relief flooded his veins.
‘Tell me,’ he asked later, when they were contemplating each other across the tangled sheets. ‘Where are you from? You’re not from London, are you? Are you American? What were you …’
She touched his lips to quieten him. ‘Later,’ she said. ‘Another day.’ And then she said, ‘I have to go.’
‘When can I see you again?’
‘Soon.’
‘Tomorrow?’
It was gone five by the time he walked the twenty-minute journey to his mother’s flat. A late-September day when the first cool tendrils of autumn begin to unfurl and creep through the last watery sunlit warmth of the year. The sky was pale and damp, nicotine stained. Kids yelled to each other in the remaining hours of the weekend, lone cars approached then growled on past, cats blinked at him from windowsills. And it felt like his blood sang. Like every smell and sight and sound was new and improved and unbeatable quality and he had never felt so real and certain before, never felt so sure of himself and his place in the world and it was all because of her.
At Chrysanthemum House Frank whistled as he sprang up the eight flights of stairs to his mother’s floor. Outside her door he paused on the narrow landing and looked out at the familiar view. Beyond the estate he could see southeast London spread out before him. New Cross, Lewisham, Deptford, Greenwich: a vast grey sea turning and tugging in the twilight, while in the distance the towers of Canary Wharf gazed down upon it all, unmoved.
Directly opposite, Gladioli House and Hyacinth squared up to each other in the failing light. From one lone window a white and red flag of St George fluttered resentfully in the breeze. In the scrubland below a few skunk-dazed kids lounged upon a bench, mumbling to each other from beneath their hoods while a girl dragged her screaming pushchair past a sign that said No Ball Games. Frank turned to unlock the door with his spare key. Next to it, uneven letters scratched into the brickwork said, ‘Eugene Rules’, and ‘Jimmy is a bender’. He grinned as he let himself in.
‘Mum?’ The familiar bleachy heat of his mother’s flat hit him full in the throat. He found her on the sofa, boredom and loneliness draped around her shoulders like a favourite cardigan and he felt his spirits nosedive. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she was dressed in different clothes, he would have sworn that she hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d last been there two days ago.
‘You all right then?’ he asked, sinking into the sofa next to her while the TV blared in the stuffy lounge.
She nodded without looking up.
‘Been up to much?’
She stabbed the remote at the TV set until David Dickinson loomed orange on the screen. They both knew she didn’t need to answer that: she hadn’t been outside for almost a decade. She had not once left this flat for nearly ten years. Restlessly he got up to fiddle with things around the room. On the coffee table, by a pile of Tarot cards, sat a variety of unopened aromatherapy bottles. Along the mantelpiece was a selection of runes gathering dust. The shelves were full of various self-help books ordered from the pages of a Sunday supplement. Frank scanned their spines and knew without having to look that each one would be bookmarked a few chapters in, showing the point where his mother had given up and gone back to the sofa and the telly. He sat back down. ‘Any good?’ he asked, nodding at the screen.
‘Nah. Load of bollocks.’
He sighed. Outside, a train rattled and roared along nearby tracks, a familiar sound from his childhood – the noise of strangers hurtling onward somewhere beneath him, while up here, in this flat, nothing changed and nothing moved. He went to the window and tried to relive the moment when he had kissed Kate goodbye that morning. From his doorstep he had watched her walk the whole length of his street (she wouldn’t let him call a cab or even walk her to the station), until all he could see was the yellow cap of her hair disappearing around the corner, and he’d finally closed the door and sat on his sofa for twenty minutes, grinning into space. He smiled again at the memory and went to make some tea.
On the way to the kitchen he stopped at his old bedroom and gazed in at the peeling FHM posters, the queue of plastic dinosaurs on the window sill, the cork board cluttered with pictures of him, Eugene and Jimmy as teenagers, a collection of ancient gig tickets, flyers for all-night raves, line-ups for long-forgotten Glastonburys. Sitting on the single bed he slipped his hand beneath the mattress to pull out an old photograph hidden there. He hadn’t looked at it for years, but now he stared at the familiar picture, absentmindedly smoothing out the creases with his finger. A summer’s day in some long-forgotten pub garden, his mum and dad clutching drinks and smiling shyly at the camera. He was aged nine or ten, sat between them on a bench eating ice cream. Frank’s eyes rested on his father’s face. A few weeks later he’d gone out for cigarettes one morning and never come back.
Out of habit, Frank searched the sun-dazzled eyes for clues, but not too intensely, not anymore. The old grief had faded to almost nothing now, just a faint scar, albeit one that flared occasionally at odd perplexing moments, or when he spotted, fleetingly, his father’s vanished face in his own. Mentally he sifted through the memories: a smell of tobacco and soap, a croaky laugh, a red tartan shirt, huge hands around him, throwing him into the sky. Memories of memories perhaps, rather than the real thing; he didn’t entirely trust them. Since that morning fifteen years ago, his mother had not once mentioned his father to him again. He pushed the photograph back beneath the mattress and went to the kitchen.
Leaving Chrysanthemum House an hour later, Frank felt his mood lighten as he checked the time on his mobile: 6.30 p.m. Twenty-five hours exactly until he saw Kate again. He headed in the direction of the Hope and Anchor where he was due to meet Eugene and Jimmy and smiled as he wondered how they’d got on the night before.
He had met Jimmy within minutes of his first day at Morden Comprehensive. White-faced, Frank had sat gripping his Star Wars pencil case and trying not to make eye contact with any of the other terrified eleven-year-olds in the unfamiliar classroom. He hadn’t even noticed the large, stocky boy on his left. Their teacher, Mr Jacobs, had just begun bellowing the register when suddenly the kid had elbowed him in the ribs. ‘Oi,’ he’d hissed. ‘Got any fags?’ Frank had turned to see a fat face covered in freckles with two small round eyes staring back at him.
‘Nah,’ he’d whispered. ‘Don’t smoke.’
He’d turned his attention back to the front. A moment later the boy had nudged Frank again. ‘Do us a favour, mate?’ he’d asked. ‘Tell the teacher you feel sick and need the bog.’
Frank stared back at him, horrified, and shook his head. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘No way.’
Immediately, the kid had waved his arm in the air. ‘Oi, Sir!’ he shouted, pointing at Frank. ‘Says he feels sick, Sir. Wants me to take him to the bogs, Sir.’ Thirty heads had swivelled in Frank’s direction and, mortified, he’d ducked his head.
The teacher peered at him. ‘That true?’ he’d asked suspiciously. Frank had swallowed hard, and shrugged, while his new classmates looked mockingly back at him. ‘All right,’ Mr Jacobs had sighed. ‘Off you go then. Hurry up.’ Jimmy grinned and dragged Frank to his feet.
‘Cheers mate, I owe you one,’ Jimmy had said, once they’d reached the toilets and he’d fished a crumpled fag out of his pocket. ‘I was gasping. Want one?’
Frank glanced anxiously at the door. In five minutes the bell would go and someone would come in. He was going to get caught bunking off on his first day and it wasn’t even half-past nine yet. He shook his head, lent against a blue radiator and stared through wired glass to the empty playing fields below. He couldn’t even remember his way back to the classroom.
‘You all right?’
Frank suddenly realised the boy was peering at him intently.
He’d shrugged. ‘Yeh.’