? ? ?
The music almost blew her hat off as they walked through the door. Gloria Gaynor was belting out “Never Can Say Goodbye” and the Boys’ Brigade hall was heaving with sequined tube tops and unsuitable legs in short skirts. Oxfam has had a good week, she thought.
Kate looked at Joe’s stricken face and laughed. “Mum heaven,” she shouted in his ear. “You go to the bar and talk to the women there. I’ll take the dance floor.”
She sashayed into the crowd, arms raised in mock tribute to the opening bars of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” as Toni lurched towards her and enveloped her in a hug.
“This is brilliant,” Kate shouted. “Fantastic job, Toni.”
Toni gave her a double thumbs-up and screamed in her ear to follow her.
They wove their way through the dancers, avoiding flailing arms, to a table near the emergency exit.
Toni did the introductions, pointing and shouting the names: “This is Jill and Gemma.” The two brunettes bobbed their heads at her, smiling warmly. “And Sarah B. and Sarah S. and Harry.”
Kate mouthed hello to all of them. Harry raised one startled eyebrow in recognition.
“Kate’s the reason we’re all here,” Toni screeched. “She gave me the idea in the first place. Come on, it’s my favorite record. I want to dance all night.”
Four of the women jumped up to join her and Kate stayed put with Harry.
They tried to talk, but it was impossible so Harry shouted, “Ladies’ toilet?” and they trooped off.
“Meanwhile back at the youth club,” Kate said when they reached the traditional teenage sanctuary and closed the door on the music.
Harry eyed her up and down. “Why are you here?” she hissed.
“Toni invited me. You know why I’m here.”
At that moment, the cubicle door swung open, banging noisily on its hinges in time-honored fashion. A woman in a beautiful blue dress emerged and Kate looked at her closely.
SIXTY
Emma
SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2012
Harry and I met at Woolwich Dockyard station and got a taxi to the venue. The Boys’ Brigade hall had stopped being new a long time ago. It looked as if it was leaning drunkenly to the left, the asbestos roof was mossy, and the paintwork was peeling.
“Can’t believe it’s still standing,” Harry said, paying the driver and leaping out. She’d gone for the glam-rock look and I’d opted for New Romantic, after looking through a box of old clothes in the loft. I found one of Jude’s old dresses with a thousand buttons—it hung off me, way too big, but I could’ve sworn I’d worn it before. I got Paul to help me. He kissed me when he’d finished and said: “You look fantastic, Em. Go and have a lovely time with the other ravers.”
“Thanks for the buttons,” I said, slipping my coat on and picking up my keys. “Don’t wait up. I’ll be late.”
“Okay, bye,” he called, switching on the television.
? ? ?
The disco is in full swing and the music hits me like a brick to the head so that I can’t see or hear anything for a few seconds. Harry pinches my arm to get my attention, her eyes shining. “It’s like stepping back in time,” she shouts. “But we’re legal this time. Bacardi and Coke?”
“No, Dubonnet and bitter lemon or that horrible sweet cider. I want to be able to taste it on the way back up.” We are both lighter than we have been for years, kidding around like teenagers.
Toni and her gang gather around us immediately, eager to hear where we’ve been all these years.
I’d decided beforehand what I’ll say about my life story. Keep it short and sweet, Emma, I told myself. Let’s keep the grime and degradation to a minimum. We don’t want pity. Or judgment.
And it all seems to go well. I let Harry do the talking—well, she tries, but it’s hard to make herself heard over the thunderous clamor of a hundred voices singing along to Wham!—and the girls are rapt. They keep touching us, as if we are aliens. Hilarious, really, but if I’d stayed, I might be doing the same thing. Might have been one of them. A middle-aged, restless mother with a little job at Tesco and kids who don’t ring.
Finally, we get our drinks, and when some of the others get up to dance, I try to talk to Harry but it’s hopeless and in the end I head off to the loos. I’ve often wondered why so much of my adolescence was spent in stinking public lavatories, but it all becomes clear when I get in and shut the door. It was the only place we could hear.
I go into one of the cubicles, crouching on the child-sized loo and reading the obscene messages scrawled at head height. Apparently, a girl called Maz is working her way through the ranks of the Boys’ Brigade, marking them off on the wall as if she’s a con doing time. Perhaps she is.
I store the info to tell Harry, but when I come out of the cubicle, she’s there. She’s talking to a woman I’ve never seen before. Our age, but I don’t think she’s from our school. So I decide to save Maz for later.
The woman is Kate Waters. I feel like someone has hit me in the stomach when Harry introduces her. I hear myself gasp and turn it into a cough, so she won’t know. But she is looking at me as if a spotlight has been turned on. I wait for her to expose me. Even though I know she doesn’t know my real name. My mask feels so flimsy, I can sense it slipping away. But Kate Waters shows no sign of recognition.
I try not to react when she mentions Alice Irving. Move the conversation to a safer place.
That must be interesting, being a reporter, I can hear myself saying. God, I’m so obvious. She must know. She must see right through me.
If she does, she doesn’t show it. She goes along with my little game. She is a laugh, actually—she knows all about Malcolm Baker and Sarah S. even though she’s only just met us. Toni must have told her. Funny that, a bit like me and my books. An instant expert on someone else’s life. Dangerous to think you know too much, sometimes, because who really knows someone else? You can scratch the skin, but you never get to the meat of someone else. Into their bones.
SIXTY-ONE
Kate
SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2012
God, she’s slim, Kate thought when she saw her. Wish I could lose some weight.
“Emma,” Harry said. “I didn’t know you were in here. I was waiting for you at the table.”
“Sorry, I needed a quick pee. These long drinks go straight through you.”
“Hi, I’m Kate,” she said.
“Hi. Kate? I don’t remember a Kate in my class. Were you in the year above? Toni’s class?” Emma said.
“No, she’s a reporter,” Harry said. “Kate Waters.”
“I was talking to Toni about the Alice Irving story—the baby found in Howard Street—and she invited me to her reunion,” Kate explained.
The woman reacted to the news by avoiding eye contact.
Hiding, Kate thought. But hiding what?
“That must be interesting, being a reporter,” she said.
Kate looked at her. Classic distraction technique, she noted. She’d expected a comment or a question about Alice. That was the most interesting thing she’d said, wasn’t it? It was what everyone who lived round here was talking about. Not that she was a reporter.
“Er, yes, I get to meet all sorts of people. How about you? What do you do?”
“I’m a books editor,” she said
“Em works on celebrity memoirs,” Harry chipped in.
“Like a ghost writer?” Kate said.
“No, someone else is the ghost. I sit in my spare room and polish other people’s stories for them.”
Kate smiled. “I seem to be doing a lot of that as well. Are you sisters, then?”
Emma smiled back. “Sisters from another mother, we say.”
It was a bit of a struggle but Kate pushed on with the small talk.
“What a great job. Have you done anyone good?”
Emma listed a couple of big-name footballers and her current film star project as she rummaged in her handbag for her makeup and Kate made all the right noises.
“Must be fascinating seeing behind the public face,” she said.
“Yeah, fascinating and a bit scary at times,” Emma said.