Desperate Dan, he seemed happy enough down there in the small space, and had pinned swathes of gold silk on the ceiling and walls, which hid the pipes and plumbing and billowed out, giving it the look of a harem. I loved going from attic to cellar, seeing how each character had made their space their own. As soon as Mum and Dad had gone and the tenants had moved in, the house had taken on a new atmosphere; a poster of Grace Jones appeared in the hall, another of Madonna in the sitting room. We ate what we liked when we liked, stayed up late, got up late. The house became a social centre for many friends who, like us, had little money to frequent bars or clubs and so loved to come and hang out. Phil Collins playing ‘One More Night’ was on a loop tape in the sitting room, and the house was always full of students or musicians, rolling joints, drinking tea, getting stoned and putting the world to rights.
It was perfect, and I had Marcia to share it all with.
*
Marcia rolled the most elegant joints I’d ever smoked. Not those fat, loose ones with tobacco and hashish spilling out of the end that got covered in spit because no one could get their mouth around them. Hers were long and slim, like panatella cigars.
On the low table in front of her in her room, she’d laid out her supplies: Rizla papers, king-size; silver cigarette case containing menthol, not regular tobacco; silver pill box with mother-of-pearl inlay containing her stash, and several immaculately cut pieces of white card for making roaches.
She reached for her Zippo lighter and lit up.
I smiled. ‘It’s like attending a Japanese tea ceremony, having a smoke with you.’
‘I like to do things properly,’ she said as she inhaled deeply. ‘Er … thing is, Bea, I’ve got some news.’
She was always coming back with news for me, as I did for her. We were Marcia and Bea, Bea and Marcia. We did everything together, had done since we’d met that first day in secondary school. We shared all our discoveries: men, music, fashion, feminism, books, heroes or heroines to be admired or discounted as we pleased. We made all our decisions together; the most recent to decorate her room in the Zen style she’d got into. We’d painted her room white, took away the base of her bed and put the mattress on the floor, a bamboo blind at the window, a single poster in black and white depicting yin and yang in a circle on the wall, a small Buddha in the corner and books on Mahayana Buddhism piled up by her bed. I went for a more bohemian look. I liked the Pre-Raphaelites and we chose posters of Ophelia by Millais, Beatrice by Rossetti, Hylas and the Nymphs by Waterhouse for my walls. We bought vases and a chenille bedcover from an antique emporium in town, used embroidered silk shawls as throws on the sofa. Marcia said it had the look of a Victorian brothel. I was happy with that. I was the romantic back then; Marcia, ever the seeker, had just got into yoga and meditation, interests she tried to pass onto me but without much luck: I could never sit still for long enough. After years of friendship through school, it was great to be actually living together, and it was really thanks to her that I didn’t miss my family more in those early weeks after their departure. She more than made up for them.
‘It’s about Pete,’ she said as she handed me the joint. ‘He wants to take a year out to go travelling before university.’
I took a drag. ‘Oh Marcia, I am sorry,’ I said. She’d just met him at Glastonbury back in June where he’d been manning a food stall, and I knew she liked him a lot because he’d been staying at the house every weekend for the last month.
‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s me that’s sorry.’
‘Of course you are. Where does he want to go?’
‘All over. Cuba, Goa, Thai Land.’
‘Sounds wonderful. You must be gutted.’
She looked away. ‘No, you don’t understand. I’m going with him.’
‘With him?’ My heart sank and my head swam as the marijuana took effect. ‘But you can’t. Your place at college—’
‘I’ve already spoken to them. It’s OK. I can start next year instead. Look, I am sorry, really I am, but it’s too good an opportunity to miss.’ What was she saying? She’d been making plans and not telling me? We told each other everything, everything: periods, moods, how far we’d gone with boyfriends and how they rated as lovers; everything. My heart sank further. This was the first time I’d ever been excluded. ‘And you’ll be OK here, you’ve got Matthew and Juliet. You’ll meet people.’
I laughed. My brother and his girlfriend had even put in a mini-kitchen up on the top floor so they could be self-contained, away from the rest of us.
‘When?’ I asked.
‘In a week or so.’
‘Or so?’
‘On the twenty-eighth of August.’
I felt sick. She couldn’t be going. We had everything worked out. The house. Parties. Barbecues. College. We’d bought secondhand bikes to travel in together. We were going to bunk off in the afternoon to see movies. Go shopping. Bake our own bread. It was all planned.
‘Come with us if you like,’ she added, though with little conviction.
‘I can’t. You know I can’t. Mum and Dad left both Matthew and me in charge here. I can’t abandon him. Anyway, I couldn’t come and be a tagalong with you and Pete – that would never feel right.’
‘They shouldn’t have left you with all this,’ said Marcia, ever my champion. ‘What about your Aunt Carol or Uncle Mike? Can’t they take over?’
‘Not that simple. I mean, yes, they’re meant to check in on us every now and again, but they have their own families. Anyway, it was my choice to stay. Dad did keep asking if I wanted to go with them. I insisted on staying.’ I didn’t add that it had mainly been because I thought that, as long as I had Marcia for company, I didn’t think I’d need anyone else.
‘Yeah right, some option, the middle of nowhere, a million miles away,’ said Marcia.
‘You’ll be going that far. Millions of miles.’
‘Different. We’ll be travelling.’ She could see she had no argument and blaming my parents didn’t wash. She was abandoning me and she knew it.
‘We’ll have to find a new lodger to take your room.’
‘I guess.’ She couldn’t look at me.
I couldn’t help it. My eyes filled with tears. ‘Is it definitely definite?’
Marcia nodded. She still couldn’t look me straight in the eye. We’d had our own plans to travel in the holidays: Europe, maybe India. But why should she hang around waiting for me just because I had responsibilities? She had a boyfriend, was in love. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to go.
‘Maybe you’ll meet someone when I’m gone,’ she said.
‘Yeah right,’ I said. By that time, I’d had a few boyfriends: Bruno who was my brother’s exchange student and here for a summer. Before him there had been Kevin, but I’d lost touch with him when his family moved away; a few dates in between, but no one special like Pete was to Marcia.
‘You’re too fussy,’ said Marcia.
‘I just don’t see the point of compromise, that’s all.’
Marcia smiled. ‘Some day your prince will come. In the meantime, get a bit of practice in.’
‘Maybe.’ But I knew I wouldn’t, not unless it felt special, and the idea of ‘practice’ was not one that appealed, not since the Andrew Murphy disaster, a time I’d told no one about. Despite him, though, I still was a romantic at heart, hoping that one day I’d run into a man who looked as if he’d stepped out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting by Burne-Jones or Rossetti – a King Cophetua down the deli, or Hylas buying hummus at the corner shop.
She left two weeks later. I sat in her empty room after she’d gone