Summer Lies Bleeding (6 page)

The assistant shakes her head and picks up the machine. After a long pause, the machine whirrs and the assistant rips out the sales docket, removes the card from the slot then smiles weakly at Kerstin.

‘That's all gone through.'

She hands the card back to Kerstin, who receives it with her sleeve still stretched safely over her hand. Then, grabbing the new purse, she rips off the price tag. The woman looks at her with a horrified expression, but Kerstin doesn't notice. She takes the old purse and starts to empty its contents onto the gleaming counter: her ID card for work; her debit card; her Sainsbury's loyalty card; four twenty-pound notes. Then she unzips the middle section and pours a pile of loose change out.

‘What are you doing?' asks the woman.

‘I need to get rid of this purse,' says Kerstin as she slots the cards and notes into their new home. ‘Would you mind putting it in your bin?' She puts the damaged purse onto the counter. The woman looks at it in horror, like she is being handed a dead fish.

‘Put it in the bin?' she says, her expression one of utter bewilderment.

Yes,' says Kerstin, as she scoops up the coins and drops them into her new purse. ‘It's ripped.'

‘Oh,' says the girl, taking it from the counter. ‘But this is a Prada wallet.' Her eyes light up as she touches the golden lettering. ‘Are you sure you want to get rid of it. It's not a huge rip.'

‘Yes, I'm sure,' says Kerstin, tucking the new purse safely into the left hand pocket of her bag. ‘Thank you.'

She walks away, leaving the woman holding the Prada purse like it's an abandoned child. As she steps out onto New Bond Street she takes a deep breath. The purse and the counting must surely have rectified it all. If she keeps calm, she can still get the report finished by Wednesday and redeem herself. Her mind falls silent as she walks back to St James's Street.

*

Seb smiles to himself as he walks across Albert Bridge, Cosima's voice still ringing in his ears: ‘Bye, Daddy. Don't work too late!'

He has safely deposited her with Yasmine's mother, Maggie, in her tiny, cluttered maisonette on Battersea Bridge Road; the flat his wife grew up in. It is difficult to imagine a family of four sharing such a cramped space for so many years. Even now, with her children grown up and left and her husband dead, Maggie fills every last square inch of the space, though so tiny herself. Yet, the happiness and loving disorder that permeate that flat is hard to resist; there is always something delicious being cooked in the kitchen and Magic FM is a constant in the
background, creating a kind of easy-listening aural soup that you have to swim through as you walk in the front door. When Seb left Cosima she was dancing around the kitchen to ‘Build Me Up Buttercup' while her grandmother chopped the onions for the sunshine rice, her feet tapping on the linoleum floor, her bottom wiggling in time to the beat.

It is a world away from the immaculate Dorset country house where he used to visit his own grandmother as a child. Visits there were sporadic and pained. When he was a toddler, his grandmother would only let him into the house if his parents kept him strapped into the pushchair or held tightly on their knees. Heaven forbid he should scrape the polished floor with his toys or smear chocolate on the William Morris patterned sofa. On the rare occasions when he was allowed to play on the floor, he would feel anxious and wary, looking up for approval from his parents who would be sitting miserably around his grandmother's oak dining table, politely drinking tepid tea and nibbling tasteless, expensive cakes. He remembers his grandmother's beady eyes watching him intently; waiting to pounce the moment his little hand came too close to an ornament or vase.

His family is a sore subject between him and Yasmine. Coming from a loud, carefree family where anything and everything is freely discussed, his wife finds it hard to understand the lack of communication that blights Seb's family. He has never discussed anything personal with his parents;
he doesn't know how he would even begin. The idea of hiding feelings, of burying hurt and pain had been so ingrained in him as a child that he had thought it normal. It was only when he met Yasmine that he realised it was not a sign of weakness to feel depressed, to have bad times, to be vulnerable.

Yasmine has gone some way towards opening up communication with Seb's parents; in fact she gets on with her father-in-law splendidly. He likes her pragmatism and boyish sense of humour; while she understands his military bluster and eye-watering bluntness. Yet his father cannot look Seb in the eye; he has never understood his artistic second child who cried at the beginning of each school term and was more at home in the art studio than on the rugby field. Even now if they find themselves alone in a room for more than a few minutes, a heavy awkward silence descends; the sound of two people who are utterly bewildered by one another. It saddens Seb, it always has, but that is the way it is, and anyway, it is the only blot on his otherwise blemish-free world.

It is a beautiful afternoon; the sun is still hanging onto its last moments and sharp silver light streaks across the windows of the seventeenth-century terraces on Cheyne Walk as Seb crosses the Embankment and heads towards Oakley Street.

As he walks, he plans his evening: if he can get three of the pictures up tonight then there will be time, in between meetings tomorrow, to finish off the big painting – his surprise gift for Yasmine. She has put her heart and soul into launching
this restaurant and she deserves to be a success. When they first met, she was working as a sous chef in a little French restaurant in Waterloo. Their dates were spent walking along the South Bank in the early hours looking at the twinkly blue lights in the trees and the alien glow of the London Eye as it hovered above the river like a giant space ship. Her hours were crazy – 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. most days – but she was a hard worker and passionate about food. She was always trying out new ideas, new combinations of flavours; testing out her creations on Seb. She had even enticed him, a committed vegetarian, to eat meat with her sumptuous, slow-cooked Moroccan lamb dishes. She was never going to settle for being a sous chef, though, and soon she was ready to take on the next challenge, becoming Head Chef of a fusion brasserie on Lavender Hill.

But it was North African cooking, the food of her ancestors, where her passions lay and as Seb's painting career started to take off with the help of three sell-out London shows and a wealthy collector investing in some of his back catalogue, the idea began to form that maybe they could open up their own restaurant. When Seb's best friend and business partner, Henry Walker, came on board, they knew that it was going to become a reality. Henry doesn't believe in failure and whatever he invests in receives the full force of his enthusiasm and ambition. After building a successful model agency, an art gallery and a string of fitness studios, a London restaurant was next on his wish-list. But not any old restaurant, no that
would never do for Henry; he was going to take them right to the gastronomic heart of London: Soho.

Seb had smirked when Henry showed him the proposed site – a vacant building right next door to Seb's old drinking haunt, The Dog and Duck pub on Frith Street. For a moment, he had hesitated. What if being back in Soho resurrected old demons; what if the temptation to slip back into his binge drinking proved too great? But then he had looked at how far he had come – his family, his successful business, his sobriety. It would take more than a little strip of street to tear all that away from him. And Yasmine had fallen in love with it on the spot, so he had given Henry the go-ahead and here they are, eight months later, ready to launch Soho's newest restaurant: The Rose Garden.

As he crosses the busy King's Road, he sees a number 19 bus in the distance. Happiness surges through him as he walks towards the bus stop. There is something so complete about this day; all is as it should be. He feels sharp, clear, completely connected to everything around him: the gleaming red fire engines lined up outside Chelsea Fire Station; the sparkling fairy lights twinkling in the window of Heals, even the angry-faced newspaper seller outside the bank – they all have their place, their roles to perform, just like him. Yes, he thinks, today is a positive day.

He smiles as the bus comes closer; its destination displayed in thick, white letters: PICCADILLY. He climbs aboard, scans his
Oyster Card and takes his seat by the window. As he stretches his legs out in front of him, rain, that has been threatening all afternoon, starts to fall; a gentle rain, smearing the windows and giving the world outside a vague, dreamlike quality. The doors close and the bus pulls away towards Sloane Street. The rain starts to come down quite heavily and as they stop at the lights a procession of tight-faced women clutching large carrier bags from Harrods, Prada and Harvey Nichols run across the road, umbrella-less and exposed, their perfectly blow-dried hair wilting in the downpour. Seb smirks, thinking of his grandmother's perfect drawing room; her hawkish eyes. Rain is the great leveller, he thinks, it makes sopping wet rags of us all.

‘Damn,' exclaims Stella as she squints to see the road ahead. She hit a patch of heavy rain just outside London and now, as she navigates Earl's Court Road, her vision a blur of watery car headlights, she hears her phone beep.

‘Not now, Paula,' she shouts to the empty car. She hadn't expected this; she had imagined her return to London would be epic, she would sweep into the city like a prodigal child and the great buildings, the statues and monuments would bend towards her in a kind of embrace. But real life is different; real life is sitting in traffic watching windscreen wipers sweep in front of your eyes; listening to the toneless voice of the Sat Nav as it directs you towards a multi-storey car park. Real life is wet and insipid; the golden sunrises, the blazing colours and rhapsodic sounds only exist in the imagined world, the place Stella finds when she writes.

She swings the car into a vacant space, turns off the engine and closes her eyes. So now it begins. All the build-up, all the
expectation and this is where it starts, in a grey car park in Earl's Court. She picks up her phone and smiles. She is ready now, ready to hear Paula's voice, to take her place at her lover's side. The solitude is over and she is happy that it is. She types in the security password that until a few weeks ago had been unnecessary and as she presses the call button, she feels a little stirring deep in the pit of her stomach. Paula is there in the hotel room; she imagines her lying naked on the bed, her black, bobbed hair framing her green pixie eyes, half-closed with desire; her beautiful lithe body stretched out, waiting for Stella to come and take her. It has been weeks since they last made love and now Stella feels that absence and wants to make up for it, she wants to drink in every last drop of Paula, to love her until they are both spent.

She holds the phone to her ear and after a couple of rings a terse voice answers: ‘Stella, where the hell are you? I've been calling and calling.'

‘Oh, hello to you as well.' Stella's erotic thoughts dissolve into the chill evening air as real life returns with a thud.

‘Don't be sarcastic, Stella,' says Paula. ‘I was worried sick. I thought you'd changed your mind or worse, had an accident. Really, it doesn't take much to send me a quick text to say you're okay …'

Stella holds the phone away from her. Paula always gets shrill when she is agitated. When the voice falls silent, Stella puts the phone back to her ear. ‘Are you finished? Because I'm
sitting in a damp car, after driving for two-and-a-half hours in pelting rain and if it's all right with you I would like to come and join you, have a glass of wine and relax. This is supposed to be a break you know, Paula. We are allowed to enjoy ourselves once in a while.'

Paula sighs down the phone and it crackles like white noise into Stella's ear. It is the sigh Stella has become accustomed to, the one that says that Paula is disappointed but is swallowing her anger lest it causes an argument. There has been a lot of that lately; the two of them avoiding confrontations, sighing deeply and heading to their respective rooms at opposite ends of the house. ‘Right,' says Paula. ‘Well, I'm in the apartment – it's lovely by the way, good choice. I can't believe I've never been here before. The bed's a bit weird, it's on a kind of plinth, but it's a really big space and pretty too. They've put some lovely peach roses on the table and the fridge is full of goodies.'

Stella smiles. That sounds like the old Paula, all excited about food and flowers. Stella had booked the garret above The Troubadour – the little fifties coffee house on Old Brompton Road – a few months ago, when they got their appointment at the fertility clinic. It was one of her favourite places in London; a little piece of Parisian bohemian heaven tucked away in a quiet corner of Earl's Court and she had been so excited to bring Paula along to see it; to show her the pretty coloured glass bottles in the window that always made her think of an ancient, London apothecary

‘I'm so glad you like it,' she says to Paula. ‘I can't wait to see you. I'm just going to get a ticket for the car then I'll be with you. I love you.'

She goes to press the end call button on her phone, then hears Paula say something on the other end.

‘What was that, angel?' she says softly.

‘I said, don't forget the plants,' says Paula, the tenseness creeping back into her voice.

A damp feeling of anti-climax spreads across Stella's chest.

‘No, I won't forget the plants,' she says, as she clicks the phone off and puts it into her bag.

*

Mark stands holding onto a metal rail as the packed Piccadilly line train hurtles towards Russell Square. He left King's Cross later than planned after eating a cheese-and-tomato baguette and a plate of spiced potato wedges under the great golf-ball dome of the newly refurbished station. He didn't recognise the place as he came through the ticket barriers and turned left, expecting to see the usual dirt-encrusted gloomy pubs and half-hearted burger bars. It was so slick and shiny, like some futuristic airport lounge, and, for a moment, Mark imagined he was heading off on holiday; that this trip was about pleasure rather than anger and pain. As he headed towards the Underground, curiosity got the better of him and he decided to get something to eat. Hunger is bad for concentration and he wanted to have all his wits about him once he got to Soho.

The next station is Holborn. Change here for the Central line
.

The voice fizzles through the carriage like static electricity. As the doors open and release a smattering of passengers, Mark spots a vacant seat towards the middle and lifting his rucksack off his back he flops down as the doors start to close. A rotten smell wafts under his nostrils and he looks around the carriage trying to locate the source of the stench. His eyes rest upon the woman sitting opposite him. She is in her late-fifties, dressed in batik print scarves and a long, brown woollen skirt. Her black hair is threaded with grey and she wears no make-up on her thin, sallow-cheeked face. She is reading a copy of the
Evening Standard
and on her knee rests a plastic tub containing a hard-boiled egg which she is taking bites out of in between reading. The egg smells putrid and stale, rather like the air in the carriage.

He stares at the woman. She looks like a teacher he once had at school – Mrs Rogers, that was her name, miserable old bitch – who took him for English and History and made his life a misery for five years because he didn't understand the meaning behind books like
Lord of the Flies
. She would make snipey comments as she handed his homework back to him: ‘Well, Mark, what can I say? Your essays are a masterclass in completely missing the point!' Dried-up old cow. He wonders what became of her; she's probably sitting in some nursing home dribbling into her tea. He shudders. The thought of Mrs Rogers and the smell of the woman's egg makes him feel nauseous.
He shakes his head and looks around the carriage. There is a young man standing by the door wearing low-slung skinny jeans and a skin-tight leather jacket, giving his arse a good old scratch as he scrolls through his phone with the other hand; in the seat next to him, an old man in a blazer and slacks is hacking up phlegm while opposite, the woman bites into her egg with a slapping, slurping noise. People really are repellent, thinks Mark. They are just a mass of stinking, putrid waste.

The next station is Piccadilly Circus. Change here for the Bakerloo line
.

Mark stands up as the train slowly pulls into the station. As he waits by the door, his eyes meet those of the woman with the egg. He stares at her and suddenly he is back twenty years looking into the eyes of his nemesis. The woman in front of him is chewing the last mouthful of egg and she looks vulnerable, pathetic somehow, but her eyes bore into Mark as though she is reading his thoughts, as though she knows what he is going to do and is making her judgement. As the doors open with a screech, he looks again at her but she has returned to her newspaper. He steps down onto the platform and as he hoists his rucksack onto his back and picks up his black bag, the train starts to pull off. He looks up and sees the woman staring at him again; there is something about her expression that fills him with rage and he contorts his face and mouths the words ‘fuck off' at her departing form. He tries to shake it off, the strange encounter, but her face is still in his head as
he turns the corner and heads up the escalators and the noise and bustle of Piccadilly Circus.

*

The rain has stopped and the air smells of soil and grit as Stella turns the corner into Old Brompton Road. A small figure slowly walks towards her; its hand waving like a pearly white globe against the darkening sky.

Paula. She has changed out of the jeans and jumper she was wearing earlier and put on the pretty green silk tea dress that Stella bought her last Christmas.

A deep feeling of desire washes over Stella as she approaches. In the distance she can see the mottled lights of the Troubadour; can hear the clinking of glasses and the light chatter of people gathered outside for drinks.

She has missed this: the sounds of London in the early evening. It's like the first sip of wine; the prelude to something wonderful. Other cities, other towns, don't sound like this. In St Leonards, the genteel enclave of Exeter where Paula and Stella live, early evening is heralded with the clattering of shutters going down over shop windows, a collective sigh that the working day is done; in Vejer de la Frontera, the little white town in Southern Spain where Stella and Paula spent the first eighteen months of their relationship, early evening sounded like midday anywhere else: the shouts of street vendors and stall holders, children's laughter and the ring of the cash register in brightly lit shops; while in the small Yorkshire
village where she had grown up, early evening was a pure white blanket of silence, broken intermittently by the swish of curtains being drawn, the growl of a wheelie bin being dragged down a driveway and the collective switching on of television sets.

She had forgotten this feeling; had, over time, attributed the buzz to Soho, but it is the same all over the city. London at this time of day truly is the best place on earth to be. She could have this again; just like that she could come back …

‘Hello, you,' she says, dreamily, as Paula draws closer. ‘You look beautiful.'

Paula smiles then gives a little shiver. ‘Well, I thought I would make an effort just for you,' she giggles. ‘Although I should have put my jacket on, it's getting quite cold now.'

Stella leans forward and kisses her on the mouth. Paula, as always, smells of orange blossom. It is a fragrance she concocted herself as a teenager and is now such a part of her that if one day she decided to wear another perfume something fundamental, something distinctly ‘Paula' would be lost for ever.

‘Have you got the plants?' Paula asks as she gently releases herself from the embrace.

‘Oh, they'll be okay in the car for tonight, won't they?' says Stella, not wanting to walk all the way back to the car park now she is within spitting distance of a comfortable chair and a large glass of wine.

‘No, they can't be left in the car,' says Paula. ‘I won't rest tonight if they're not within sight. I did ask you to bring them. Do you know how much those plants are worth? If the car was stolen, I would be in deep trouble. Yasmine Bailey is expecting them tomorrow for her launch on Wednesday, plus she's already paid for them.'

Stella sighs. There is always something. ‘Look,' she says, placing her hand on Paula's shoulder. ‘I'll just put these bags into the room then I'll go and get the plants, okay?'

Paula looks pensive, like she is imagining all the potentially catastrophic things that could possibly happen to her plants: a drug-fuelled joy ride across Earls Court; a smash and grab in Mayfair.

‘Give me the keys and I'll go and get them,' she says, holding out her hand.

‘Oh, Paula, for goodness sake,' says Stella. ‘I'm talking a matter of minutes. I wish you would relax. They'll be fine. It's a secure car park.'

‘It would just put my mind at rest if I go and get them,' says Paula, softly. ‘Then I can enjoy our evening. You go and freshen up, it's been a long drive. Go on and I'll follow you up.'

‘Okay,' says Stella. ‘If you're sure.' She retrieves the keys from her coat pocket and hands them to Paula. ‘It's just round the corner, first left. The car's on the ground-floor level, right by the entrance.'

Paula takes the keys and nods. ‘Oh, you'll need this as well.'
She opens her handbag and pulls out a large, Alice in Wonderland-style key with a big square wooden key ring attached.

‘Wow,' says Stella, taking the key. ‘It must be a big door.'

They both laugh, then Paula leans towards Stella and strokes her cheek. ‘I can't wait to be with you these next few days,' she says, tenderly. ‘It's been so long since we've had a proper break. I love you so much, you know that don't you?'

Stella nods her head and smiles.

‘It feels good to be back,' she says, looking beyond Paula, into the darkening night sky.

Paula flinches; it's a miniscule gesture but Stella notices; it's Paula's worst fear: that London will reclaim Stella, will drag her so far back into its folds that Paula won't be able to hold on to her; that she will lose her control.

‘Now go on and get the plants, you little worrit,' says Stella with a giggle. ‘I'll see you in the bar.'

Stella stands and watches as Paula disappears into the darkness, then she turns and walks briskly towards the Troubadour.