‘Oh right,’ I said.
He dropped the flap back down, wiped his mouth with his sleeve. ‘Well, you don’t have to.’
‘No, that’s . . . Cheese and piccalilli is my favourite. Thank you.’
The cinema was fairly empty. Dale marched us to his desired spot – centre middle – then stood back against his chair to let me in. ‘Is that OK? I prefer the other person to be on my right.’
I felt him, smelt him, as I squeezed past. We’d never been to the cinema together before. Our hanging-out had mainly taken place at the house or at Connelly’s. An awkwardness rose between us. We smiled in unison.
I’d only known Dale for three months at that point. He was already a tenant of the house on Lynton Road when I’d moved in. I’d gone to the viewing in a state of desperation. Dale was at work, but Mr Papadopoulos, the breathless, fleshy landlord, showed me round.
‘This would be your bedsit . . . You share bathroom and kitchen with nice young man who live in room opposite. I’m in flat upstairs . . . Very quiet. You can come straight away. Anna, the other girl . . . nice girl . . . left one night and never come back . . . Left me up the shit’s creek.’
I wanted to cry as I stared into the damp-smelling room, decorated with greying woodchip, double bed on one side, brown velour sofa on the other. A torn paper lantern hanging from the ceiling. The only thing brightening the place was a lurid green dreamcatcher with dangling pink feathers hanging from the bedhead that I knew I’d be immediately throwing out. Dreamcatchers scared me. My dreams were something I’d never want to be caught. But after the horrors of the previous places I’d viewed that day, and the fact it was available immediately, I was relieved to accept.
I’d not long left Manchester behind, it all behind, and moved into my first London abode. A room in a house belonging to a middle-aged actor called Rupert James. It was ‘bijou yet airy’, aka minuscule with a window. But Rupert was interesting – colourful, let’s say, and I presumed gay. The roll-top bath had sold me. I’d only seen the likes of it in magazines. Above it was a shelf on which sat a skull. I hoped it was a prop from a Hamlet production and not his previous tenant.
All went well for a couple of weeks until one day I returned from work to find my bedroom had been cleaned and tidied. Bed made. Dirty clothes picked up. Dirtier knickers ditto. And Blusha, my one-eyed elephant, tucked up neatly under the covers with only her trunk on show. I was uncertain who was being the weirdo, him or me. But I didn’t like it. Inside.
Then one evening I went into the kitchen and there he was, smoking an enormous joint and holding an even more enormous glass of red wine, which explained his eyeballs and skin always having a matching crimson hue.
‘Constance.’ He removed a glass from the draining board, filled it with wine to a level higher than his own and handed it to me.
‘Constance, my dear, I need to ask you something.’
It was clear he’d noticed my change since Tidygate. I decided I’d be brave, tell him, politely.
Then it came. ‘Constance. Dear Constance. Would you like to fuck?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Would you like to fuck?’
Floored, scared and unable to think of a more repulsive prospect, I didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable, so I said, ‘I’m really very tired, Rupert, but thanks anyway,’ then went to my room, locking the door behind me.
In bed, I pulled my knees to my chest, foetal, and squeezed Blusha with more intensity than ever before. Not only because of Rupert but because it hit me. The gradual drip, drip, drip from which I was running. As I bit Blusha’s ear to transfer my pain onto her, I realized I was completely alone. Unprotected. Unloved. If Rupert had added me to his skull collection, no one would have noticed. No one would have cared. That was my new reality. Immersed under the covers, I allowed myself to cry for the first time since I’d left home. This must have somehow carried me into a deep sleep because the clock said 03.07 when I woke to the rattle of my doorknob turning frantically, followed by the thud of a foot kicking against the wood. By 03.09 this stopped. By 04.30 my case was packed, and by 05.00, when I could hear definite snoring from the next room, I left. By 14.00 that day I’d moved into Lynton Road, and by 20.00 Dale and I were friends.
It’s hard being friends with someone who doesn’t truly know you. What you really are. But he was the only person in the world I had. The only person who cared.
Dale thoroughly enjoyed the film. I thought it was pretentious crap.
We were still arguing about it on the bus home.
‘But he loved her,’ he repeated for the hundredth time.
‘So?’ I repeated for my hundredth time, each one increasing in volume, intensity. For that last one I half stood up to say it. ‘He was just some nutter who sat watching her, obsessed. She didn’t even know him.’
‘Not all men can tell a girl he likes her, you know.’
‘Then the poor cow is in a coma and he shags her. No, no, rapes her.’
‘But he did love her.’
The cycle began again until I broke it with ‘Loving someone doesn’t excuse everything, you know.’
‘You’ve never even been in love, Constance.’
‘So?’ This ‘So?’ was considerably quieter than my previous ones, and I remained firmly seated to say it. ‘You haven’t either. You told me.’
He turned away. His usually soft marshmallow face stony in the window’s reflection.
I sat back and looked out towards the insane, lit-up London that I’d never feel part of. And as I did, against my will, your face strobed my mind.
The next morning it was still you who occupied my thoughts.
Not Dale. Not even poor Dr Williams.
Instead of swiping snooze on my alarm with increasing despair, I woke immediately. Facing the wall, for once I wasn’t irritated by the tear in the woodchip that exposed a rainbow from wallpaper of times gone by. My mind wasn’t darkly drawn downwards, through the mattress springs, beyond the wooden slats, to the suitcase below filled with realities I couldn’t face. Once out of bed, I wasn’t crestfallen by the disarray of my room. Or the mould that clung to the tiles round the bath when I showered. I even washed my hair and shaved my pits.
I wore a silk blouse that had only ever had an outing for my cousin Margot’s wedding. Applied a lick of make-up. Nothing obvious. I didn’t want it to be noticeable to everyone, to Dale.
As I snuck out of my room, Dale exited his, feigning surprise at my being there, smiling as if the night before he hadn’t slammed his door without saying a word.
I went along with the charade and we left the house, chatting about needing milk and bin day. At the end of Lynton Road, when we were about to part ways, he said, ‘You look weird today,’ then ran for his bus.
On the hot, stifling Tube, my blouse now ruined by ink blots spreading under my arms, I dwelt on Dale’s words. My single atom of confidence melted, I rubbed at my cheeks and stripped the lipstick with the back of my hand.
By the time I’d reached the surgery, I looked more bedraggled than usual. And when Linda glanced up at me, bemused, I was unsure if it was because of my appearance or the fact I was on time. Something I hadn’t managed since my first day.