from his stack of albums; the fantastic garden glimpsed through a ramshackle wooden door; Pete, smiling lazily at me, his arm around Alex. And then the bizarre tea party in this room, where I’d felt like Alice in Wonderland, huge and misplaced. After that there’d been helping Fitz make some food before Alex and Pete came down.
I peeled and chopped vegetables for him to scoop into a big pan, to be made into curry. As he cooked so he talked, in his London-Irish lilt. And as he talked he seemed to warm to me, open up a bit. I found out he was the eldest of six children and that his proper name was John Fitzallen. He was born in Waterford but his family came to England when he was five. They live in a crowded flat in a tower block in Bethnal Green and on turning sixteen he was turned out.
‘Not literally, not quite, but it’s what was expected. The place was bursting at the seams and there were too many arguments.’ He’d got a job in a hotel kitchen and a room that went with it. Two years later he was one of a few staff laid off. ‘I was on the streets,’ he said. ‘Didn’t have enough money for a deposit on a room and couldn’t claim dole ‘cos I didn’t have an address. The old benefit trap. Spent a few weeks sleeping rough, the odd night in a hostel. It wasn’t nice.’
I liked the effortless way he moved between cooker, cupboard and table, watched him sprinkle spices out of recycled jam-jars, judging it all by eye. Sometimes, thinking about something I’d asked, he’d stand still, one hand rubbing the back of his neck as he searched for what he wanted to say.
‘Couldn’t you have gone back home?’
‘Nah. My space had been filled — there were no beds left. I didn’t ever tell them. I just…well, I just didn’t. I was lucky though — someone told me about this place, took me along to meet Pete and I’ve been here ever since. It’s okay, a good squat. Pete keeps a tight rein on it, won’t let just anyone doss here.’
‘But what do you do for money? I mean, how do you buy food?’
‘I’ve got some work now, hotel down the road, twenty hours a week, more if I want.’
‘And Pete? Does he work?’
Fitz looked round from stirring the curry. ‘You don’t ask questions like that.’
There was no time to say any more, because right then Pete and Alex came down. Alex was wrapped in a vintage, print dressing gown, the sort you could buy cheap in Oxfam. With her wild hair and dark lips she looked vampish, like a silent-movie star. Someone produced a bottle of Hirondelle and I gulped the first glass down quickly; Pete gave me more. A second bottle was drunk with the curry, which tasted fantastic and exotic; up to then my experience of Indian food had been a Beef Vesta, which was like one of my mother’s stews with sultanas and too much pepper.
After eating we went into the room at the front and sat round on cushions and beanbags. Fitz brought down his stereo and some albums, and when that was all set up he rolled a joint and passed it round. I took a couple of drags and Alex giggled, threw one comradely arm round my shoulders. At first I felt nothing. Second time round I had some more, and slowly my head began to unravel; thoughts lost their shape, all crowded somewhere just out of reach. I felt blissfully connected to Alex and the others yet strangely far away from them. That part of me, the observer, was only faintly shocked now at how proficiently Alex rolled a second joint. No one spoke much, we just listened to music and smoked and drank more wine and then some of Pete’s tea. Fitz sat slightly apart, retreating into himself, listening to one record after another with his eyes closed, mostly stuff I’d never heard before, a jumble of soul and rock and punk. Eventually I stopped trying to think about anything and gave into drifting on a tide of music and dope.
Now, trying to remember how last night ended, I realise I have no clear memory of going to bed. I look around me, frowning as I try to picture things, but all I can remember is Fitz setting the glass of water down by the bed. Fitz in my room. Shit. Shifting slightly in the sleeping bag, I put one hand down and explore myself gingerly. I have no experience of what I’ll find if anything happened, just a vague idea that I would feel sore, or tender, or maybe there will be blood. I find nothing.
I’m trying to ignore the fact that I need to pee, not wanting to be the first one up, not wanting to leave the security of this room, but when my bladder feels about to burst I emerge and scoot along to the bathroom in T-shirt and knickers. My head throbs sickeningly and a thin needle of pain keeps shooting into my right eye. I find I can suppress that slightly by pressing two fingers onto the skin just above it; I sit on the toilet like that for ages, and begin to think longingly of a hot bath. When I peer into the tub I see how pitted and stained it is, with a tidemark of grime, and chalky lime-scale where the taps are left dripping. Not exactly inviting, but I could live with it. Should I take a bath though, without asking? Maybe it won’t matter, while everyone is still asleep.
However the taps then fail to give up any hot water so I make do with a cold wash at the sink. Back in my room, easing a pair of jeans over my hips, I hear someone go along to the bathroom; peering round the door, I catch a glimpse of Alex’s robe.
‘Alex!’ I hiss.
She whispers back. ‘What?’
‘I need to talk to you, now!’
Squinting at me through mascara-smeared eyes, Alex nods. Even with her hair all flattened and messy she still looks cute, a tiny thing wrapped in her silky print robe that billows all around her.
‘Okay. But I need a pee. And tea, and food. I’ll be back.’
While she’s gone I fix my hair so that it will look more banshee than hedgehog, with the aid of some backcombing and my mother’s old compact mirror that I stole out of the drawer at home. I put eye-liner and mascara on, feeling naked without them.
Alex reappears in a while, carrying a tray of tea and a plate piled high with toast. We sit on the bed to eat it, me propped up against one wall, Alex on the other, her legs stretched out over mine. It’s how we always sat on my bed at home and there’s a moment of comfortable silence while we munch on toast.
‘This toast is the best ever, Alex. I’m so hungry.’
‘Yeah, hash does that.’ Her voice is still sleepy. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I feel shit. But the food’s helping. You look all right. You’re used to it, I suppose.’
‘Beth…’
‘Alex, look, it doesn’t matter, I don’t care. I just wish you’d tell me what’s going on.’ I stare down at my plate and chase crumbs around it. ‘I mean, home wasn’t that bad, was it?’
She doesn’t answer at first. I hear music start up downstairs; Fitz is awake.
‘Beth, have you ever noticed anything about my parents?’ I look up to find her staring at me, her eyes dark and intent. ‘Like my dad looks nothing like me?’
The image that swims into my mind is of her father stepping out of his car one day, just as I was leaving. Tall, big, heavy-set. Blond hair. Blue-eyed. Everything that Alex is not.
‘You’re joking.’
‘No, I’m not.’
I sit up straight. ‘Your dad’s not your dad?’
‘Hey, mastermind!’
I picture the rest of her family. Her mother, petite like Alex. And her brother, David. Fair, chunky.
‘But…he is David’s dad?’
‘There’s no mistaking that little blood bond, is there?’
‘And—’ I want to be really clear now ‘—your mum’s your mum. I mean, you’re not adopted?’
‘You got it.’
‘So…’
‘So who is my dad? Good question. I’ve never met him.’
‘Never? You don’t know him?’
‘Beth, if I did, and if I thought