“And have you seen him again?” I asked when given a second to speak.
“We’ve seen each other every day for the last two weeks!” She raised an eyebrow smugly.
“No wonder I haven’t heard from you!” I said, jealousy now flooding every bit of space in my body.
“He comes to meet me after work and we walk back to mine, or dinner, cinema, you know, just nice date things.” Just nice date things. What were those? “I think the sex will happen soon, though,” Cassandra said coyly.
“Well, I’m really happy for you, Cassandra.” I forced a smile. “Let’s see what he looks like?” I pulled out my phone and tapped the Facebook icon.
“He’s like me, he doesn’t have any social media, so no stalking, I’m afraid,” Cassandra said turning my phone over. “But rest assured, he’s very good-looking. Anyway. Should we eat? I’m starving.” She opened her menu.
“I’m not hungry, actually. Lost my appetite,” I said, taking another sip of water. My head felt cloudy and my stomach didn’t feel much better.
“It just goes to show, doesn’t it? All that worry I had about me not connecting with someone, and look!” Cassandra squealed.
“It’s so great, really!” I said quietly. “When are we going to meet him?”
“Soon.” She seemed to hesitate for a second. “I’m going to do things the other way round, get him to meet the family first, I think, then friends. How’s work, by the way?”
“It’s fine.” I shrugged. “It’s frustrating, sometimes. You know, I really care about things, and when I pitch something to her, Gina always tells me it’s not good enough.”
“What things specifically?” Cassandra asked.
“Black Lives Matter things.”
“What is it you said to me when you were going for your interview? ‘Even if they don’t pay me, it doesn’t matter, because my presence in the room will be enough,’?” she recalled.
I nodded, remembering why I put up with Cassandra’s cons. There were clearly a few pros.
“Well, if you care, you’ve got to keep pushing it. It’s important, and it’s why you took this job in the first place. How are you for money, by the way?”
“Ah,” I said, embarrassed by what I was gearing myself up to ask. “I’m so, so sorry to ask, but could you transfer me just a tiny bit to take me over to payday? I get paid earlier because of Christmas, so I can pay you back soon.” I was ashamed but also relieved that she’d asked before I could beg her.
“Don’t worry about that, just add it to the tab. What would you do without me?” Cassandra smirked, flipping her golden-brown hair almost violently.
* * *
On the way home, I texted Guy. He came round that night, had sex with my body twice, and left. We didn’t use protection again. I needed to take this seriously and not self-sabotage. The last thing I needed adding to my unclear relationship situation was an STI. What was wrong with me? I wished at this point I cared about myself enough to try to answer the question.
* * *
“Bruv, this club is dead,” Kyazike shouted in my ear. “Shit music, the drinks cost nuff, everyone is looking at us like we’re aliens.” She gestured around the venue at the trendy boys and girls who would briefly stop blathering away in their own worlds to glance at us, the only people of color in the club, with suspicion. I looked around the dingy room lit by fuzzy red lighting that bothered my eyes, its close black walls making it feel smaller than it was. It smelled tangy, and Kyazike and I slid across the wet floor whenever we tried to move. I’d only come out because Kyazike had told me that our best years were almost behind us and that I especially needed to have some fun.
“This is what happens when white people come into an area and make it tame,” Kyazike shouted above the music.
“Gentrification.” I nodded sadly.
“What?” Kyazike asked before downing the remaining half a glass of champagne.
I leaned over and repeated what I’d said in her ear, my voice straining over the buzzing EDM. Kyazike gestured that we go outside, so we got up and walked to the smoking area and stood huddled under a heater. She kissed her teeth. “Rah. Gen-tri-fi-ca-tion, yeah?” She sounded the word out. “So gentrification is the reason I’ve wasted my makeup?” She looked at me. “And I wore my best shoes.”
“I didn’t want to come here, you’re the one who chose it!” I protested.
Kyazike gently moved my head away from the heater so that my hair didn’t catch fire. “Yeah, but you’re the one who lives in Brixton, you should have warned me, innit,” she said, pursing her lips.
I laughed. “I can’t keep up with all of Brixton’s changes.”
“Queenie. You’re Caribbean. Brixton is you lot’s domain. You should know what’s going on in your area. The same way that I’m African, and Peckham is my lot’s domain. I know what’s happening in Peckham,” Kyazike informed me.
“So why didn’t you choose somewhere in your domain?” I asked her.
“I need to broaden my horizons, break out of the ends. My search for Mr. Right continues and I ain’t finding him in Peckham,” she said, reading a message on her phone. “But true say this club is too dead for me. My cousins are at a rave on Old Kent Road, you want to come?”
We went to slide our way inside and were stopped by a drunk girl with short pink hair who reached out and ran her hands through my twists as if they weren’t attached to my scalp. “OhmygodIlovethemsomuuuch!” she gasped, mesmerized.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Kyazike said, grabbing the girl by the wrist and pushing her hand away. “You can’t do that!”
“Oh my God,” the girl whimpered, clutching her wrist as if Kyazike had snapped it.
“Don’t fucking touch people like they’re your property!” Kyazike shouted at the girl. “You dickhead.”
The girl’s friends hurried around her and cooed over her drunkenly as Kyazike and I started to walk away, me tucking my hair into my scarf so that we didn’t have a repeat performance.
“What’s going on here?” A bouncer with dyed red hair that matched a tight T-shirt that strained over his muscles appeared suddenly from the darkness and put each of his giant hands on mine and Kyazike’s shoulders.
“Eh, take your hands off me.” Kyazike stepped away from him. “Ask her what’s going on.” She gestured at my handler.
“I was only being nice,” the blond girl said, looking with big blinking eyes at the bouncer.
“Right, you two, you’ll have to leave.” The bouncer put his hand back on Kyazike’s shoulder and pushed us toward the door.
“We’re leaving your shit club anyway,” Kyazike told him. “But if you like your clientele reaching out to touch black people like we’re animals in a petting zoo, then fair play, innit.”
Kyazike went off to Old Kent Road while I sat on the bus home, absolutely astonished and yet still not entirely shocked by what had happened in the club. It was unfair, whichever way you looked at it, and was pretty indisputable evidence that even in Brixton, where we were meant to be the majority, we weren’t. Another reminder that we and our needs didn’t matter. Before I got off the bus, I made an internal list of people who could touch my hair:
1. Me
2. A hairdresser
3. That’s it, that’s the whole list
chapter
NINE
THE DAY WAS dragging. Darcy was on a pre-Christmas break with her family, and I was too exhausted by life to try to talk to anybody else in my office, so my only interaction was with Chuck the intern. He kept asking me to join him for coffee, and I kept finding more inventive ways of saying no. He, more than anyone, needs to learn that you can’t have everything you want. Why wasn’t I this much of a beacon for men when I was a teenager? It would have undone years of damage caused by being the funny friend in a group of desirable blondes, brunettes, and redheads. I was about to go and make my millionth cup of tea for something to do when I got an e-mail from Ted.
On Tuesday, 11th December, Noman, Ted <[email protected])> wrote at 16:21: