‘Yeah, this time next year.’
‘Maybe we’ll be famous.’
‘Infamous.’
‘Yeah …’
More fireworks obliterated the rest of that particular conversation.
After a few minutes they packed their stuff away and got to their feet.
‘No fox tonight?’ said one of them.
‘Probably scared by the fireworks,’ said the other.
They both paused and looked down at my little pile of possessions. ‘I wonder if the homeless girl will turn up.’
‘Maybe she’s already here.’
‘Ooooh, scary!’
‘Shall we leave her something?’
‘Like what?’
‘I dunno. The rest of this champagne?’
I noticed for the first time that one of them was holding a bottle by the neck.
‘Yeah. Why not, I don’t want it.’
They planted the bottle carefully on the ground by my things. Then one of them said, ‘Happy New Year, homeless girl.’
And then the other one said, ‘Hope your year gets better, homeless girl.’
And then they disappeared again.
I watched them part ways on the street outside. I saw Joshua walk slowly across the street to his house and his equally lanky friend walk the other way, down the hill.
And then the fireworks stopped; the sky cleared; it fell silent. I took off my trainers and put on the big fluffy socks I’d packed. I tucked myself inside my sleeping bag. I sniffed the rim of the half-drunk bottle of champagne and thought better of it. I switched on my phone and replied to some messages, including one from Aaron saying he was on his way home and he’d see me in the morning. I stared up at the sky, the fresh 2019 sky. Black, new, unwritten-on.
38
Cate goes to see her house in Kilburn on Sunday. She doesn’t like going during the week when the builders are there and she gets in the way and they look at her curiously as if she has somehow caught them in the act of doing something bad.
It’s early when she leaves the flat; the children are still asleep and Roan is in bed, propped up on pillows with his laptop, catching up on some work. She decides to walk; it’ll take thirty minutes and it’s a pleasant morning. She crosses the street and peers into the empty plot through the foliage. You would never know, she thinks to herself, you would never know about the detectives and the police cars and the helicopters; it was as if none of it had ever happened. Then she walks past Owen Pick’s house, not avoidingit for once. All is quiet. Curtains are drawn. The morning has only just come.
In her empty house in Kilburn, she can see her breath. Her footsteps ring off the bare floorboards; carpets will be coming, tiles will be coming, curtains and furniture and wallpaper and cushions will be coming. The bare bones are in place now and she can almost picture it as her home again. She stares from the window on the mezzanine level, out into their wrecked back garden. It’s full of bags of cement and lengths of wood and the grass is obliterated by builders’ debris. She pictures herself out there, in a few months’ time: it will be high summer, the sky will be acid blue, they will have some nice new garden furniture – she’s already picked out the things she wants from the Ikea catalogue – and maybe there will be a barbecue going. She will no longer have to see Owen Pick’s house every time she leaves her front door. No longer have to pass by the scary empty plot with its screaming foxes.
She inhales deeply and holds on to the quiet thrill that passes through her, the anticipation of it all. She passes up the staircase to the room that is very near to being her bedroom again; it overlooks the street, out towards a row of unthreatening terraced houses, just like hers. No sinister empty spaces, no ancient, creaking trees throwing shadows across her bed, no sex pests lurking behind heavy doors and grubby curtains. Just normal houses filled with normal people. She will never take Kilburn for granted again.
She takes some photos of the progress for Roan to look at later and then she locks the door behind her, lays the palm of her handbriefly, affectionately, against the outside wall of the house and heads back to the flat.
Roan is in the kitchen making toast when she gets in.
He says, ‘Want some? I can put another slice in?’
She says, ‘No, thank you, I had breakfast already.’
