the tube she keeps up a torrent of questions, wanting to know everything that’s happened after she went. I feed her answers, knowing the questions I need to ask will wait. If it all seems a little narcissistic — What does everyone think of me? What did they say at school? What do people think has happened? — I let that go. She never once mentions her parents. Finally, as we emerge from Camden Town station into weak sunlight she seems to remember that I’m not just an extension of her.
‘Where do your mum and dad think you are?’ she asks.
‘At home.’
‘Huh?’
‘They went to Jersey for two weeks yesterday. After they’d gone I told Karen I was going camping.’ Alex turns her head, stares at me, nearly bumps into someone. We giggle, and I feel suddenly warm, proud of myself, pleased by the glow of admiration in Alex’s eyes. ‘I said if Mum and Dad ring tell them I’m with Hilary and Rachel. They like Hilary and Rachel.’ I realise how that sounds. ‘I mean, they think they’re sensible.’
Alex snorts with laughter. ‘Well, that’s because they are! Thank God for you, Beth.’ She tucks her arm into mine, and I pray that she won’t guess how far my liking for a little excitement is being pushed.
‘So how long have you got?’
I hesitate. ‘I told Karen one week.’ I don’t say that I’ve taken two weeks off from my Woolworths holiday job. If I decide to stay longer I’ll tell her then. ‘Karen’s supposed to be looking out for me, but I think she’s glad to get me out the way.’
‘She still with that Richard guy?’
‘Yeah.’
My head spins as I catch sight of a huge crowd of punks, moving along the road in a swarm of leather and tartan and chains, holding up traffic as they swagger across a busy street, their progress marked by crests of hair. I catch the eye of one of them and there’s a flicker of acknowledgment of my membership of the club, not so much a nod as a tiny tilt of the chin. Compared to them I’m on the margins, but, still, I like that he noticed me.
‘It’s punk city round here,’ Alex says. ‘I love it.’
A crowd of backpackers separate us for a few seconds.
‘Alex, who are you living with?’
‘Beth, look there. That’s the Post Office Tower.’ She grabs my arm, pointing up to where it sits in a gap between buildings. ‘The one with the revolving restaurant — it spins round while you eat.’ She pulls a face. ‘Think I’d be sick. And, Beth, see the Doc Martens shop? The Sex Pistols go there.’ She drags me over and peers in, as though we’ll see Sid Vicious lacing up his boots, winking at us through the window. The shop is full, alive with leather and chains and rainbow hair. ‘We’ll go in one day. Have a look round.’
‘Are you staying near here?’
‘Not far. Come on, let’s go. Give me your bag. I’ll carry it for a bit.’
We tear ourselves away from the window. After walking for another ten minutes we take a left and a right, past a warehouse and some lock-ups, finally turning onto a sorry-for-itself terraced street. Empire Road. The houses are big, four storeys high, with steps down to the basement and more steps up to the wide front doors. I guess they once housed wealthy families, with maids and servants. Now each house has a long strip of buzzers with the names to one side. There are one or two exceptions but mostly the paintwork is peeling, the masonry crumbling, and the tiny scabby gardens are dotted with litter and dog shit. Above our heads reggae spills out and two people argue loudly.
The excitement of being in London gradually recedes, replaced by a quiet dread that feels like a lead weight in my belly. I’m torn between an urgent need for a toilet, desperate to reach somewhere — anywhere — quickly, and a strong desire to turn back and head for home.
‘We’re just down here,’ Alex says. ‘Number twenty-two. The green house.’
I look down the street and see a house that’s distinguishable, not by the colour of the door, but by the bricks themselves, painted a sludgy, olive green.
‘We go round the back.’
I follow her, hesitantly, round the corner of the street and down a back alley that smells of cat pee. On each side are wooden gates that lead into the gardens. Alex pushes against one of them until it gives way reluctantly, scraping the ground, then steps aside to let me go first. I look through and stop, hear myself catch breath. Behind me Alex laughs.
‘Surprised?’
I’m looking at the most perfect garden. Perfect not because it’s orderly, but because it’s bursting with colour, rippling with light and shade. Everything is gloriously wild and overgrown — shrubs, plants, lawn — so that the narrow path snaking through the middle of it all is only just visible. The walls on both sides have tiny ferns sprouting from between the bricks and lean drunkenly in places. To the right of the gate is an apple tree with hard green fruit the size of conkers, and beyond that a large buddleia. I know its name because Karen and I bought one for Mum a few birthdays ago. I recognise its sweet, honeyish smell and pointy flower-heads, the way it hums with insects and quivers with butterflies. In front of them is a small vegetable patch, sprouting rows of baby leaves like rabbits’ ears.
‘Like it?’ Alex’s voice swells with pride.
‘Like it?’ I say. ‘It’s fantastic!’
‘Fitz looks after it mainly — he plants all the vegetables. Celia sometimes helps, but she’s been ill.’ She tugs on my arm. ‘Come on.’
We thread our way down the path, straggly shoots from the nearest plants snagging our ankles as we pass. The back door lets us into a gloomy kitchen. Alex crosses to the hallway and shouts, ‘We’re here!’ She looks back at me. ‘I should tell you, me and Pete, we’re, like, together.’
There’s defiance in the set of her mouth. I just have time to wonder what that’s about and why she’s waited until now to tell me before a man appears at the kitchen door, in jeans and a ban the bomb T-shirt. He snakes one brown, scrawny arm around Alex and pulls her towards him.
15th May 2013
‘Come round for dinner,’ Dan had said to me as he walked with me to the tube that first evening. ‘I’ll get Fitz round too. It’ll be good fun.’
Which wasn’t quite the word to describe how I felt now.
The journey here had spun me into a trance of recollections: love in a dusty bedroom; punks on the streets of London; a wild, perfect garden; space and the cold sea in Wales. And a house smashed open and turned upside down. I explored them gingerly, like hunting through a cobwebby loft where spiders lurked. Don’t look in that box. Mind that dark corner.
When I stepped out onto Islington High Street and suddenly Fitz was just ten minutes away an underlying anxiety surfaced, crawled onto my skin. I worried that the older me would disappoint Fitz. I worried that he would disappoint me. I feared being treated like one of the complicated women Dan had alluded to, greeted with an undercurrent of embarrassment, shuffled off with relief.
And underneath all of that was the fear of finding Fitz like a stranger, that we’d have nothing to say to each other.
Dan lived in a Georgian terrace, a tiny Play School house, with squared windows on the ground floor, arched ones on the first, and a postbox-red front door. It looked inviting, the sort of house that would curl up around you, but at the door I hesitated, summoning the courage to ring the doorbell and enter the surreal moment when I would see Fitz, the man who inhabited my dreams for many years after he so briefly inhabited my life.
Finally, anticipation overcoming nerves, I put my finger on the smooth, brass button and pressed.