The One Before The One

CHAPTER FOUR

When I get home from work, Lexi’s in the back garden, sunbathing. It’s only when she removes the copy of Time Out she is reading to talk to me in comedic deep voice (I am finding she rarely uses her normal one) that I realize she is topless.

‘Afternooooon. You’re early; good day at the office?’

‘Yeah, good, thanks.’ I don’t know where to look, so I take a sudden interest in the doorframe. ‘Very productive.’

‘Great.’ She smiles brightly. Her long legs are stretched out on the sun lounger. She’s wearing bright red lipstick and enormous square shades. ‘So, what do you think?’

‘About what?’

‘My tattoo, you chump!’ She sticks her right arm out in front of her.

I look in horror at the anchor (an anchor?) splat in the middle of her upper right arm. I can’t believe this. Dad will kill me. I have an overwhelming desire to head-butt the wall.

‘You got that done today?’

‘Yes, don’t you like it? It’s like the one Amy Winehouse has, kind of ironic, you know, sailor iconography?’

‘Who did it to you?’

‘A tattoo artist did it to me.’ She laughs. ‘A very sexy, Paolo Nutini lookalike tattoo artist, if you must know.’

Who the hell was Paulo Nutini?

‘Where?’

‘Camden Market. That place is awesome. I could have spent a fortune. And guess what? I got a job!’ She sits up on her elbows and I have to look away so it doesn’t look as if I’m leering at her bosom. ‘I met this guy called Wayne.’

‘Wayne?’ I grimace. ‘Unfortunate name.’

‘I know, but he had the most wickedest shop – well, it’s not his, it’s his mate’s, but he’s working on it part-time. We got chatting, coz he’s originally from Sheffield and his accent stood out. I said I’d just landed for the summer and he said he needed some help at weekends and occasionally during the week, so …’

‘Hang on. Who is this Wayne?’

‘He runs a shop in Camden Market, like I said. And he lives in Battersea!’

‘Where?’

‘On a boat, how special is that? Anyway, do you wanna see the stuff I bought?’

‘Yeah, sure.’ I decide to come back to the Wayne thing later; this was all going way too fast. So then she’s up, padding across the garden, legs as skinny as a stork. She gets hold of my hand.

‘Come to my boudoir,’ she says, which sounds ridiculous in her thick Yorkshire accent, and I follow her, helpless. We go through the lounge.

‘Soz about the mess,’ she says, trampling all over the cushions she’s tossed on the floor earlier. ‘I was trying my new stuff on and was just about to start tidying up when you came home.

‘That’s okay!’ I lie, quickly replacing all the cushions on the sofa.

We get to the guest bedroom.

‘Okay, you stay there,’ she says, hands on my shoulders, pushing me against the wall. And then she goes inside and closes the door so I am left staring at it, suddenly feeling like a stranger in my own home. Five seconds later, music is on.

‘Ta-dar!’ She flings open the door.

‘Nice,’ I say. ‘What is it, exactly?’

‘It’s a playsuit, divvy. A vintage one.’

‘So when would you wear it?’

‘Anywhere, shopping?’

Not shopping with me you won’t!

‘Hanging out in cafés, in Battersea Park, maybe with some high-heeled sandals,’ she says, doing a funny pose like one of those vintage postcards of ladies in 1920's bathing suits.

‘And I got these …’ She shoves a pair of shoes in my face. ‘And this …’ she puts on a purple trilby. ‘Cool, or what? And there were loads of stalls and some right nutters selling stuff. There was this bloke, right, he came up to me and he was going, “marijuana”, but pronouncing it with a “J” which cracked me up. So he was like, “Do you wan-na, some maru-ju-ana?”’ She puts her hand on her hip and says it with a convincing Jamaican accent, which, despite myself, makes me laugh. A little. ‘Then he was like, “Do you wan-na some Es?” That’s when I texted you.’

Es? At Camden Market? Why was I never offered Es at Camden Market? Well, could be I’ve never been to Camden Market …

‘And, guess what? Jerome was there!’

‘Who on earth’s Jerome?’

‘A guy I met on the way here on the train – you know, the one who rang me yesterday?’

So that’s who she was going all coy with.

‘Anyway, he’s somethin’ spesh, he is. Such an inspiring person. He says he wants to photograph me. He says I have a very interesting look.’

‘Lexi,’ I groan. I get that feeling, like stop the train, I want to get off. ‘You can’t just meet up with randoms off the train and let them take your picture. This is London. A big, scary, dangerous city.’

I’ve been thinking all day about what Dad said on the phone, but it’s only later, when I’ve drunk the best part of half a bottle of wine, that I pluck up the courage to talk to her.

‘So, Lexi …’ She’s slumped on the sofa in the playsuit; laptop open, one eye on Facebook. ‘I think we need to chat.’

‘Wow, sounds serious. Are you about to dump me?’

‘No!’ Sometimes, Lexi strikes me as very sophisticated. Then she says things like that and she sounds about twelve.

I reach over and slowly close her laptop.

‘Look, you know you’re very welcome to stay …’ I start.

‘But,’ she says.

‘But?’

‘There’s a “but” in there, isn’t there?’

‘No, not exactly.’ God, I’m crap at this. ‘It’s just, Dad’s worried about you. I’m worried about you. I think we need a plan for this summer, that’s all.’

‘What sort of plan?’

‘A plan, you know? A goal. An aim.’

‘God, now you sound like Mum and Dad. They can’t go to the toilet without a personal goal.’

I resent this comparison. I hardly think me suggesting a few things for Lexi to concentrate on constitutes a ‘motivational talk’ on a level with the talks (that’ll be evangelical lectures) Dad and Cassandra give as key speakers with the Healing Horizons Forum (that’d be cult) that they run. And anyway, it was Dad who insisted I talked to her. I would quite happily have avoided anything of the sort.

‘I made a list,’ I say, finally.

‘Not another one! You’re obsessed with lists.’

‘Oh, that’s unfair.’

‘I don’t think it is. I’ve seen them all over the place. You make so many lists, I’m surprised you have time to do anything on them.’

‘Lists help you to focus,’ I say, grabbing my notebook and opening it at the page that says LEXI’S FIVE POINT PLAN. ‘Number one, your room.’

‘Oh, you’ve seen it?’

‘Yes, and I nearly had a seizure, so please sort it out. Moving swiftly on. Number two, you need to get a job. If you’re not going back to sixth form – which, incidentally is number three, we need to discuss sixth form properly – then you need to know what else you’re going to do. I thought we could draw up your options.’

‘Make a list you mean?’

‘Number four,’ I sigh. ‘You need to call Dad.’

‘I’ll call him tomorrow.’ She shrugs

‘Good, well that’s all of them.’

‘That’s it? That’s the list?’

‘Yup. Told you it wasn’t serious.’

‘But you said there were five points,’ she says, edging closer.

‘Did I?’ I move my hand so that it covers up the fifth point. The bit Dad told me to do. The bit about finding out what’s actually wrong with Lexi.

She uncurls my fingers from the notepad.

‘Find out what’s wrong with Lexi,’ she reads out. ‘God!’ She flops dramatically onto the sofa. ‘Did Dad put you up to this? He did, didn’t he? There’s nothing wrong with me, except that everyone keeps asking what’s wrong with me, and my parents treat me like I’m depressed, or a total mentalist or like it’s not totally normal for a seventeen-year-old to not know exactly where she’s going or what to do with her life.’

‘Of course it’s normal,’ I say. ‘I’m thirty-two and I still haven’t really got a clue what’s going on with my life.’

‘Liar!’

‘It’s true! It’s just, Dad said—’

‘I don’t care what Dad said. He’s such a moron sometimes. I mean, I love him, but he doesn’t understand me. He and Mum, they’re always like: “You could do anything you want to do, Alexis. The world is your oyster!” But what if you don’t know what you want to do? What then?’

‘I thought you said you wanted to be a shoe designer?’

‘Oh, I don’t mean that really. I’m crap at Art A level.’

‘I’m sure you’re not.’

‘I am. I’m crap at all my A levels.’

Her face goes bright red and she looks like she might cry.

‘Look,’ I say, realizing this isn’t going anywhere. ‘We don’t have to talk about it now.’

‘Good,’ she says, ‘because there’s no big secret. I just came here to have fun, that’s all. I just want to have a good time.’

So why are you crying? I want to say. But of course, I don’t.

CHAPTER FIVE

Caroline. Sorry, can’t do exhibition tomorrow. Got an unavoidable appointment. Enjoy though.

I stare at the text again. The umpteenth time in two days. Why didn’t he just call me? Caroline, too. Martin never calls me Caroline. And no kiss. Not even a friendly exclamation mark.

I call him one more time but it goes straight to answerphone and this time I don’t leave a message. Still, Martin doesn’t know how to be enigmatic so maybe he does, actually, have an unavoidable appointment; probably something to do with his wisdom teeth.

It’s been almost a week since Lexi arrived, and, since the hair-dyeing fiasco and the tattoo, she’s been on best behaviour. She seems to love this job with Wayne, who has already achieved guru status in my house.

‘Wayne reckons people who write obsessive To Do lists are masking unhappiness,’ said Lexi the other day, as I added ‘dry-clean rugs’ to the list pinned to the fridge.

‘Does he now?’ I said, thinking does anyone actually talk like that? And anyway, since when was a complete stranger qualified to comment on my state of mind?

‘Yeah. He reckons they’re just avoiding the big stuff.’

‘Oh, right. I see. And what is this big stuff, according to Wayne?’

‘Dunno, life I s’pose. He didn’t really go into that bit.’ I rolled my eyes.

‘That’ll be because Wayne – who I am sure is lovely but who basically runs a jumble sale for a living, let’s not forget – doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.’

In truth, I don’t really care what Wayne says, as long as Lexi enjoys working for him and he gives her some focus. I’m still pretty worried about her. She won’t talk to me, not really. We’ve chatted a bit about how she hated sixth form, a lot about her friend Carly and her disastrous love life, but nothing about hers. Once or twice, late at night, I’ve heard her having hushed, stressed conversations on the phone but I think I’ve finally worked out what that’s about.

The other evening, quite out of the blue when we were watching How to Look Good Naked, she announced, ‘Carly thinks she’s pregnant.’

‘You’re joking,’ I said, one eye on the telly. ‘What’s she going to do?’

‘Dunno,’ said Lexi. ‘She hasn’t done a test yet.’

‘No way! If I was worried I was with child there’s no way I could sit around wondering. I’d have to know.’

‘Really?’

‘Definitely. Anyway, I thought her boyfriend had dumped her?’

‘He has, which is why it’s a complete nightmare.’

There was a long pause. I was too busy watching the bit where they make her walk down an aisle, naked in a shopping centre, to really be listening, then she said,

‘Anyway, Carly reckons she’s decided she doesn’t want to keep the baby if she is.’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘What’s the furthest gone you can be before you have an abortion?’ she added, after a long pause.

‘Dunno. Twenty weeks? But then the problem is that some women give birth not even knowing they’re pregnant, especially teenagers whose bodies don’t even change that much.’

‘What, so you could just think you’re a bloater when really, you’re like, eight months up the duff?’

‘I s’pose so, yes.’

Then we watched Celebrity Big Brother and that was the end of that.

And so, what with Martin and his enigmatic ‘unavoidable appointment’ and Shona having to stay in and wait for a washing machine to be delivered, it’s just Lexi and I who find ourselves standing in the starkness of the Pump House Gallery in Battersea Park, staring at a square of turf.

‘So, by actually filming the grass growing …’

The curator, Barnaby Speck (I always read the accompanying leaflet from start to finish) is a bald, fleshy-lipped man who gives a little jump on words he finds exciting, like ‘growing’.

‘… Rindblatten is saying something about the mysterious, unseen nature of time. Time not experienced by us, time of the –’ He jumps so much on this word, I see his red socks leave his shoes – ‘Other of Otherness.’

‘Eh?’ Next to me, Lexi screws her little nose up. ‘How do you go from a piece of grass, right?’ I nudge her in the ribs, which she reacts to with a comedy death rattle under her breath. A woman in a green beret turns round and tuts.

‘In short …’ Barnaby Speck clears his throat in our direction. ‘By actually witnessing the growing of the grass, Rindblatten forces us to acknowledge the events taking place in places we cannot or see, and thus expresses beautifully …’

I am suddenly aware of Lexi’s warm, minty breath in my ear. ‘What about that one there?’

I shoot her a sideways glance.

‘What one?’

‘The tall one with the dark hair and glasses.’ She gestures in the direction of a man near the front of the crowd, peering intently at the installation – essentially, a napkin-sized square of turf surrounded by four camera lights, entitled: Otherness. The Other. An Objective Study of Displacement by Jergen Rindblatten. Lexi grimaced when I read from the leaflet: ‘I smell a bollock,’ she sniffed in that left-field way she has with words. ‘But we can go if you want.’

I crane my neck to get a proper look at the man who is lanky, wearing a cardigan and looks about twelve.

‘Nose too small.’

‘What?’ Lexi frowns. ‘What do you mean, nose too small?’

The woman in the green beret turns round again and purses her thin, crimson lips at us. Then, thankfully, Barnaby Speck moves on from talking about the grass and we are encouraged to disperse and look at Jergen Rindblatten’s accompanying sketches on the subject of ‘Otherness', which line the wall of the sun-flooded gallery.

‘Can’t do a small nose; it looks like it belongs on a doll and makes mine look even bigger.’ We stand, admiring a sketch entitled, Untitled. ‘Also, he looks about your age.’

Lexi sighs and looks around. I study the drawing, which looks like a square to me but I’m sure it’s layered with meaning if you know how to interpret these things.

Suddenly, Lexi gasps.

‘Ohmigod!’ She nudges me in the elbow. ‘I might actually have found my future husband.’

I look to where she’s indicating, to see a lean, black guy, record bag draped across his broad chest, looking intently at the drawing next to us.

‘Good God, no, he’s wearing a gold chain.’

‘Yeah? And? He’s gorgeous! I’d ’ave him. He looks like Dizzee Rascal.’

‘Who the hell’s Dizzy Rasta?’

‘You know,’ says Lexi. ‘"Bonkers"!’

‘Bonkers?’

‘The song, “Bonkers”.’

I roll my eyes at her. Who in their right mind would bring out a record called Bonkers for crying out loud. Then she starts singing:

‘Some people think I’m bonkers, some people think I’m mad. Some people think I’m crazy but there’s nothin’ crazy ’bout—’

‘Lexi!’ I grab her by her rapping arm. The tattooed arm. ‘Just concentrate on the art, will you?’

We make our way around the gallery, which sits at the top of a spiral staircase in a tall, old pump house in the middle of Battersea Park. Outside, down below from where we’re standing, I can see two swans gliding on a lake, which glitters with hot, afternoon sun, and a young couple standing arm in arm on a wooden bridge.

I turn my attention to another drawing, which depicts what looks like a mound of cow dung.

Lexi moves in next to me, head cocked to the side, pretending to read the accompanying commentary.

‘Another hottie,’ she suddenly hisses into my ear. ‘Ten past two. Your ideal man.’

‘Soz,’ mumbles Lexi. We’re walking across the park towards the river now. ‘It just wasn’t my thing. When you said “art", I thought you meant proper art, like paintings, sculpture, something where they’d splattered paint on canvas and it meant “happiness” or “death” or something.’

Half of me wants to protest. Half of me thinks: this was art, proper conceptual art, if you must know – not bloody Monet’s water lily paintings. You wouldn’t get this in Doncaster! Honestly, you try your best to show someone some real London culture and this is the thanks you get. I wasn’t sure Lex and I were really going to agree on much. However, I must admit that the other half of me did kind of agree – Otherness. The Other. An Objective Study of Displacement didn’t quite live up to my expectations, either, and, in fact, I’m wondering, if I took, say, a fork, bashed it about a bit and then wrote something about how this represented the domestic unrest I experienced as a child, I, too, could be an acclaimed artist with a ‘ground-breaking’ exhibition at the Pump House Gallery.

Also, I think to myself as we walk across the park, dodging rounders’ teams and men in rugby shirts and cropped trousers attempting to light barbecues, we had to leave. I couldn’t have tolerated one minute more of Lexi’s ‘talent-spotting’.

It’s all my fault. I should never have humoured her ‘Find Caroline a Boyfriend’ project, which was born last night, probably as a distraction from the Lexi Five Point Plan Project. (I wonder what Guru Wayne would make of that little manoeuvre.)

I didn’t have the heart, when she was looking at sad dating sites where sad people gather to meet other sad people, to say, ‘Look, Lex, I don’t want a boyfriend, I really don’t. All that having to get your bikini line waxed and worrying if they’ll call. I just can’t be bothered.’

We’re still walking across the park. Lexi won’t let the matchmaking thing lie. ‘He was your ideal type, though, wasn’t he?’ she says referring to the blond man in the gallery. ‘Tall, blond, handsome. He was well sexy, you should have given him your number.’

‘He was nice,’ I say, dodging a couple, their legs entwined on a picnic rug, ‘but like I say, I’m happy being single.’

‘If you say so. Although nobody’s really happy being single, let’s face it, not for long anyway. Wayne says single people suffer more depression than those who are attached, that it’s part of being human to want somebody.’

Praise be to the God of Wayne! Maybe Wayne should write his own self-help book.

‘The most Carly’s gone without a boyfriend is twenty-five days and that was only—’

‘You’re single, aren’t you?’ I say, turning to her. It’s more of a question than a statement. Something boy-related is going on, I’m sure of that, but then something’s always going on in a teenager’s love life.

We’ve stopped walking now, Lexi is looking at me.

‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I s’pose I am. Well it’s a bit …’ She looks the other way, like she might be about to cry, and I have a sudden desire to hug her. Not that I did the whole messy teenage business of falling in and out of love, not even having a boyfriend until Martin at eighteen. But I recognize that if-you-prod-me-I-will-break look, so I smile.

‘It’s all right, Lex,’ I say. ‘You don’t have to explain yourself to me.’

I’m about to carry on walking when my eyes are drawn towards the men in the rugby shirts trying to light barbecues. One man in particular looks familiar. It’s the legs that do it. Stocky, with no ankles. Those are Martin’s legs.

Just as this thought sinks in, he looks up from the BBQ he’s poking, gives an awkward smile, and starts to walk over.

‘Bloody bugger!’ I say, squinting at him.

‘Caroline,’ says Lexi. ‘Language, please!’

Martin grins sheepishly and waves as he walks over, that same slightly lolloping walk of his. ‘Unavoidable appointment’? Likely story!

‘Hello, you.’ He’s standing right in front of us now, holding out his barbecue prongs like we should shake them or something. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here, Caro.’

He’s had his hair cut since I last saw him three weeks ago, into a bizarre little quiff that doesn’t really suit him. However, he’s tended to it like he does to everything, with meticulous precision so that it is a perfectly symmetrical, topiary-like construction on the top of his head.

‘Clearly, Martin Squire. So what’s the unavoidable appointment, then?’ I prod him jokily in the stomach. ‘A barbecue with your mates? You could have just said.’

‘I know I could, it’s just …’

‘Sorry, you know Lexi, my sister, don’t you?’ I say, when I can see he’s struggling. ‘Lexi, you remember Martin?’

‘Oh yeah, I remember Martin.’ I shoot her a look – why the rude tone? Oh. I know why the rude tone. ‘We met a few times,’ she carries on. I feel the blood rise in my cheeks. ‘The last time when you were actually engaged to my sister.’

Martin’s eyes dart to mine. Mine dart to the floor. Why didn’t I just tell her it was me who broke off our engagement?

‘So, er, how’s tricks, Caro?’ says Martin, after a very awkward pause. ‘Just having a walk?’

‘We’ve been to see an art exhibition, actually.’ Lexi folds her arms, indignantly. ‘It was at the Pulp House—’

‘The Pump House, Lexi.’

‘It was brilliant, really inspiring.’

God, Lexi, just shut the fuck up.

‘You should go if you get the chance, although probably best to go with someone, you know, if you can.’

‘Right,’ says Martin, staring at me with something combining boy-caught-out and confusion. This is dreadful.

We stand in awkward silence until I see a blonde, plumpish girl in flip-flops and a cotton shirt dress walking towards us, smiling.

‘Hello …’ She puts her arm around Martin’s back. A girlfriend?! Martin has a girlfriend?

‘Oh, hello P.’ P? Pee?! Bloody hell, were they already on pet names and he hasn’t even told me he’s seeing someone? ‘You made me jump. Caroline, Lexi this is Polly. Polly, this is Caroline and her sister, Lexi.’

‘Hi!’ She smiles. She has a ruddy complexion, well-bred teeth and earnest, uncomplicated eyes.

‘Hi,’ I say, my face fixed into something I hope resembles friendliness. I look over at Lexi, urging her to say the same, but she’s chewing the inside of her cheek and looking Polly up and down.

‘Anyway …’ I say

‘Anyway,’ agrees Martin.

‘We’d better get going.’

‘Yes, we’ve got so much to fit in today,’ says Lexi. ‘Shopping, having dinner …’