Dutch. And tight as they come.’ Robbie prods Imo with her big toe. ‘You get it. She likes you.’
‘Does not!’ Imo pushes her foot away. ‘You go.’
‘She hates me! At least you look like a virgin.’
‘I am a virgin.’ Imo sighs. She puts down her teacup and pulls herself off the sofa. ‘Fine! Send the virgin. The virgin will do it!’ And she grumbles her way to the front door.
I lean across to Robbie. ‘Don’t you think she’s a little young to be drinking?’
Robbie shakes her head. ‘She’s nineteen. Not that you’d know it. Her father’s this big Hollywood agent. Bags of money. But her mother’s a total freak. Dresses her like a twelve-year-old, insists that she calls her every day. She’s a Born Again. Really into Jesus. It’s so sad, really’
‘But her name’s Stein. That’s Jewish, right?’
Robbie nods. ‘Ever heard of Jews for Jesus?’
I haven’t. But I’m tired of being the odd one out.
I give an all-purpose response. ‘Fuck!’
‘Exactly!’ she agrees.
We can hear the front door open and she signals to me to be quiet.
‘Hello, Mrs Van Patterson. How are you this afternoon?’
‘You girls are using too much hot water! The electricity bill is enormous! It’s outrageous how much water you use! The boiler is on a timer! You must not press the immersion button. Ever!’
‘But the hot water runs out every time we do the dishes. Or if one person has a shower.’
‘Really! I’ve never seen anything like it! What are you doing? Bathing every day?’
‘It’s been known to happen.’
‘Listen, don’t you get smart with me! Twice a week is more than enough.’
‘Where I come from, it’s completely normal to bathe every day’
‘Where you come from, people are spoilt! Americans think the world is made of money! You girls don’t know how lucky you are! Gloucester Place is one of the finest addresses in London. Have you ever played Monopoly?’
‘Yes, Mrs Van Patterson, I have.’
‘Well, it’s like Park Lane. It’s not on the Monopoly board but it could be.’
‘Humm…’
There’s a weighty silence.
‘Have you girls been smoking in there?’
‘No, Mrs Van Patterson! Of course not! Why? Can you smell smoke?’
‘Yes, I can smell smoke!’
Imo lowers her voice. ‘I think it’s the guys upstairs. I mean, it’s none of my business. But I’m pretty sure I’ve caught them lighting up in the hallway a few times.’
‘Ahhaa. I see. Right. You are a good girl, Imogene Stein. A nice, well-mannered girl. Much better than that roommate of yours. But you must not use so much hot water, OK? Right?’
The door shuts and we can hear Mrs Van Patterson stomping upstairs.
Imo comes back in and sits down. ‘Well, another near miss for the House of Chekhov’ She raises her teacup.
Robbie and I look at each other, then raise our mugs too. ‘I’m a seagull!’ we chorus.
Imogene smiles. She’s young and old, all rolled up at once.
‘Yeah, that’s me. I’m a seagull. So’—she taps another cigarette on the side of the box and lights it, propping her legs on the coffee table. ‘Anyone fancy a nice, long bath?’
Standing on the front doorstep in the wind and rain, I fumble in my jacket pocket for my keys. And then I turn and check one last time.
No, she’s definitely not there. Not hovering behind the laburnum or waiting on the other side of the gate.
Not that I really believe in ghosts.
But seeing Robbie is different.
She wasn’t filmy or white or in any way vaporous or ‘ghostly’. In fact, she looked normal, solid, wearing a pair of jeans and one of those ugly orange sweaters she’d knitted when she thought her true calling was as a knitwear designer. (She never stopped searching for her calling; every year there was a new one. And that year we all got jumpers. I still have a couple—one in fuchsia and another in a kind of toxic-waste green. They manage to be both too tight and too loose all at once; I think the neck hole is really an armhole and the armholes neck holes. She called it her ‘signature piece’.)
By the time class ended she was gone. I looked for her, walking to Covent Garden tube station; I half expected to see her trailing behind me, lingering in the shadows of Drury Lane or even standing on the train platform, reading a copy of Vanity Fair. She used to like Covent Garden, was forever picking up Australians in one of the bars in the market.
But she wasn’t there.
And she isn’t here now.
Of course, I must’ve imagined it. It’s amazing what a little insomnia and a few missed meals will conjure up in a girl. I should be relieved. But instead, strangely, I’m disappointed. The older you get, the more friends you lose to marriage, children, work; to adulthood. Friendship itself becomes an apparition; a fleeting spectre, too quick to evaporate in the glaring light of day.
I turn my house key in the lock of the enormous scarlet-painted door.
Number seventeen was once a formidable, cream-coloured, stucco-fronted Georgian property, very similar to all the other formidable, cream-coloured, stucco-fronted Georgian properties of Acacia Avenue, north London. Now, it’s seen better days. It’s the only house on the street whose garden gate squeals like an angry piglet each time it opens, or whose vanilla exterior is peeling away like shavings of white chocolate on a posh wedding cake. And, in a neighborhood where neat little box hedges and topiary bay trees are de rigueur, the garden has definite romantic, wild, overgrown tendencies; much more Brontë than Austen. In summer, the fig tree drops its heavy fruit to form a thick, gooey compote on the pavement below and each autumn the towering chestnut launches conkers at passers-by with eerie accuracy. A defiant, shabby grandeur has replaced its once impeccable façade. But in the five years I’ve lived here it’s only grown more intriguing.
It’s not your average house share. But then again Bunny Gold, its owner, is not your typical landlord either.
When Bunny’s husband, Harry, died unexpectedly ten years ago, it came to light that he’d been, in addition to a loving husband, father, a respected pillar of the Jewish community and owner of an extremely successful accountancy firm, also a chronic gambler.
He’d already cashed in his pension, life insurance and a great deal of their personal savings to meet his debts. Bunny, who’d spent her entire life in a cosy bubble of shopping, socializing and raising their only child, Edwina, was devastated. An affair would’ve been one thing. But leaving her in financial ruin was much worse. Above all, she was unprepared to part with her beloved home.
So she began to rent out rooms, although she’d be shocked to hear it described as a ‘house share’. To her, our living arrangements are the result of an intimate form of artistic sponsorship; she’s a patron rather than a landlord and will only let rooms to performers or artists whose work she admires. And, at seventy-two, her enthusiasm for almost any form of music, painting, dance, or drama, along with her remarkable appetite for the avant-garde, is nothing less than inspiring.
So, there’s me, the actress/teacher, Allyson, an Australian opera singer/teacher and our latest arrival, Piotr, a concert pianist/teacher from Poland.
And, of course, the love of my life, Alex. We share a couple of rooms and a private