A Secret Life Read online

  She was staring. Her friend with the fake fur was talking to Dom but that wouldn’t last much longer: Frank had a knack for this, though. South London, and her accents. ‘Brockley Rise.’

  She put her hand to her mouth, delighted. ‘What?’ she said, breathless. ‘How did you know?’

  He shrugged, modest. ‘Made it my life’s work,’ he said. Offering a hand across the bar. ‘Frank,’ he said. ‘Soho via Lewisham.’

  She moved her hand toward his, hesitating, ‘I’m Georgie,’ she said, ‘Born in Brockley Rise but now—’ and the hand waved off to the north somewhere, ‘it’s the suburbs.’ He nodded, seeing the wedding ring. Diamonds in her ears. Thinking, She’s spoken for. ‘It’s not the same, is it?’ she said and her hand hovered there between them but then her friend had sensed something, turned sharply and she brought her hand back to her side of the counter and the friend was sliding her drink over to her, one of Dom’s terrible martinis, giving him a frown.

  And Lucy was leaning out from between her velvet curtains and gesturing to him, violently. Men’s toilets, again: shit, thought Frank. Sometimes he wished he wasn’t considered the alpha male in this place when Eddie wasn’t about to catch Lucy asking him to unblock anything. He felt the impulse to apologise to Georgie from Brockley Rise, he felt an odd reluctance to leave her that wasn’t just down to whatever was waiting for him to deal with in the gents’. But her back was to him now, all he could see was the vulnerable back of her neck above her coat collar, flushed, downy. He slipped out.

  Frank took his time washing his hands, after. If customers only knew. Knew what there was behind it all, what it looked like Monday morning with the lights all on and the floor yet to be swept.

  And when he came back in, the tall man had broken them up: he was talking to the one who’d come in last, with her wheelie suitcase.

  She was looking the other way when he came back in, Georgie a flush on her cheek and her glass empty, and then she turned and slid her coat off, careless. The gold dress caught the light and her soft shoulders rising out of it were suddenly very bare. As Frank watched she held the glass out to the tall guy, across the other woman’s shoulder, and he took it.

  *

  Holly, Holly, Holly.

  The room swam briefly around Georgie, the sparkling downlighters and the rows of coloured bottles like stained glass, red and green and gold and the moving figures on the dance floor. The square-shouldered barman at the far end of the counter, the one who’d known where she was from who’d stood there with his hands flat on the counter smiling at her, had seemed for a while now like the only still point – and then suddenly he wasn’t there.

  I do remember you, Holly.

  The minute she came through the door, then as she threaded her way on high heels through the crowd. Pretty Holly. Her cheekbones were sharper, she was narrow-faced like a fox. Was that the right animal? If Holly was a fox, Cat was – a cat, and what was Georgie? Her own outlines were fuzzy, indistinct: she’d be one of those little ponies, stubbornly untidy, motionless in snow. She looked across the bar and caught a shard of herself, between bottles, blank.

  Now Holly had her back to Georgie, talking to the tall man who’d come over to them: Georgie could see the sharp blades of her shoulders in a cut-out vest and she could see his elbow, in dark cloth, resting on the bar. The other side of Georgie Cat was leaning across the bar top in her tight black dress chatting up the barman in his bow tie while he nodded, disengaged.

  ‘What’s with the suitcase, Holl?’ Cat had said, amused when she wheeled it, bump, toward them at the bar, bringing the street air in with her, exhaust fumes and the squeal of brakes. ‘I thought we were the out-of-towners.’ She’d already told Georgie, Holly lived in some mansion flat somewhere, paid for by a man.

  ‘I’m between lovers, darling,’ said Holly, airily.

  ‘Kicked you out, has he?’ said Cat, ‘About time too.’ And Holly had given her a quick sharp look before laughing, loudly, head back and hair rippling. And leaning down and exclaiming, Well, it’s little Georgie, look at you.

  And Georgie, remembering her vividly all of a sudden, had started to say something about her perfume, about remembering her perfume and an outfit she had used to wear all that time ago but Holly had shaken her head impatiently, miming that she couldn’t hear, leaning down with her hand cupped around her ear. So Georgie had just mumbled, Nice to see you again, Holly like the polite little out-of-towner she was.

  She’d looked for the square-shouldered barman then, who had known she wasn’t an out-of-towner. Who’d known where she was from, down to the square half-mile, who probably knew Dad’s street and the cherry tree outside it, but he wasn’t there. And then she’d caught the man’s eye, from down the bar to where he sat in the dark. Had she been aware of him all along? He’d been further off, before, had he? And now he smiled at her, kindly, as if he’d seen what had happened quite clearly, and bringing one long leg down from his barstool. She’d had to look away. A tall man.

  But when he’d got to the bar Holly had turned to him and he’d stopped, easy, his eyes sliding over Georgie and settling on Holly and they’d begun to talk, the tall man and Holly. Because he was taller than Holly even in her high heels he leaned down. Georgie must have moved because he looked past Holly to her, coolly, while he was talking, then his eyes were on Holly again.

  Was it the booze? Georgie didn’t feel drunk, exactly, but then it was a long time since she’d had more than a single glass of wine, ten years at least, they didn’t go to parties. Not real parties, anyway, just the odd work do where there was no dancing, just standing and talking and being polite till your face hurt. She felt a little numb, immune – that little Georgie, in Holly’s voice, what had that been, maybe just her manner, maybe just being sweet – as if she had been lifted a little way off the ground, to where everything was softer, easier: she could just stand here, smiling at that little piece of herself reflected behind the bar.

  Cat was leaning across the bar and was re-tying the other barman’s bow tie for him. Georgie felt she couldn’t be drunk because she could see the man’s vague expression exactly and every detail of Cat’s long fingers, broken skin at the knuckle from washing up, a roughness at the pad of her thumb, a chip in the varnish.

  She wasn’t happy. Cat wasn’t. The revelation had come halfway from the last bar to this one, hanging on to each other at a set of traffic lights, jammed between a gang of tourists behind them buying Union Jack mugs from a stall and taxis touting for business. Cat had let out an explosive sigh.

  ‘What is it?’ Georgie had said and for a moment Cat had said nothing, just stared across at the little red man forbidding them to walk. Then a longer sigh.

  ‘Just tired,’ she said. And rattled it off quickly. Settling in to a new place, the boys, her husband Harry never home, money was tight. With a quick glance sideways at Georgie, who knew straight away there was something else, something she wasn’t saying.

  ‘Is it—’ but then the little man turned green and Cat had jerked her arm and that was that.

  Now in the glow from behind the bar Cat smiled into the barman’s face, and obediently he smiled back.

  They had opted for dirty martinis, Cat pouting as she said it which was the whole point, after all, and now Georgie’s glass sat on the bar, almost empty, just an olive and a little oily trace left and she drained it. With the burn and the taste Georgie felt the stir of something, she saw a whole other life unroll like a carpet, a red carpet, the gangway to a big glittering ocean liner. If she’d been brave enough. From behind the bottles Georgie saw her own downturned mouth. She’d let Tim look after her, after – after that first time and God knows, women all over the world deal with that, don’t they? And much worse. It was only a bloody miscarriage. Bloody. Georgie pulled herself up straight. She turned to say it to Cat, her revelation, but Cat wasn’t there.

  There she was. Further down the bar and Georgie could see that the boy – he was a boy, he might have a beard and
a bow tie but he couldn’t be more than twenty-five – had a laptop he was showing Cat at the end of the counter and it must have had music on it, because he traced a finger over the screen and it came on loud, and then Cat had raised her arms over her head and was moving. Georgie could see a shadow of stubble under her arms and her radiant smile then some guy was there on the dance floor in front of her, obscuring Georgie’s view, his arms up to mirror Cat’s. Georgie turned, feeling herself beginning to move too, and she was nodding, smiling because it was an old track everyone knew and it had worked.

  The space was filling up, heads nodding in unison, ten bodies, twenty. But as she swayed Georgie became aware that something was wrong, she didn’t know what and then she realised, she still had her coat on. She wriggled her shoulders out of it, bare skin to the warm air, felt for a hook under the bar and there was one. As if she’d been here before, in another life.

  Did Tim dance? Had he ever? Georgie couldn’t remember suddenly, and she almost laughed: she could only see his face, she felt him shake his head at her and then she turned and saw that the other barman was back from wherever he’d been, what had he said his name was? Frank, flushed but serious in his suit jacket and frowning. At her? He’d been so friendly. She wanted to say, What? To lean over the bar and ask him, What exactly am I doing wrong? but then Holly shifted and it was the tall man looking at her past Holly’s sharp bare shoulder, looking at Georgie and Georgie alone, and he was smiling at her. He tilted his head and his smile was warmer. And careless, certain, Georgie leaned past Holly, and her glass was in her outstretched hand, and he took it from her.

  Chapter Five

  Something hurt, all down one side of her body.

  Eyes closed Georgie tried to turn over, not even sure if she had been lying face down or up. Something was wrong, it took too long, it was too difficult, her body too heavy. The bed felt different, harder, narrower, she reached across for Tim and her hand flapped in empty air.

  And then it came, a sudden quick eruption of panic: she couldn’t feel her hand, her leg wouldn’t move and even her face, her face felt numb. Georgie lay, feeling her heart pound, unable to move. Other hand – she willed it, and it did move. It moved. She eased herself over, off the dead hand and leg, stiff and sore, and the other side moved. Her body responded. Dead leg. Dead leg, that’s all. She opened her eyes.

  A low ceiling lightly furred with dust, a dormer window, the corner of a cheap wardrobe and a thin curtain letting in grey light. She looked sideways and saw Cat’s face turned towards her, scrunched in sleep, panda-eyed with mascara, the cover pulled up. Beyond her, on the third bed along the wall she could see a clump of streaky hair and a naked arm drooping to the floor. Holly, lying face down. Her little wheeled suitcase, its handle still raised, stood at the foot of the bed, unopened, her clothes in a pile on the floor, the inner arch visible of a high-heeled shoe on its side. Georgie stared at it, she couldn’t remember what, how – she lay very still, feeling life return to her left side, it tingled, then it hurt, that horrible feeling when a numb limb comes back to life. She must have slept very heavily, she must have—

  From nowhere sweat beaded on Georgie’s forehead, the back of her neck. Her head pounded, and the skin of her cheeks felt raw and hot. This wasn’t her, hungover in a horrible hotel room.

  Gingerly she sat up and winced, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the dull grey light that slanted through the little window. In their beds Cat and Holly hadn’t moved, humped shapes in the dawn. This isn’t you, she thought, wanting to be off the bed and gone, back to the station, get on the train, sort herself out, brush her teeth. She shifted in the bed but everything whirled suddenly, and she sat back on the thin pillow and put a hand to her forehead. Her hand felt hot and under it her head throbbed.

  This isn’t you. This isn’t real. Saturday morning and she should be calling up from the kitchen to Tabs, out of bed. Tim with the newspaper, legs crossed in the living room, turning his head to smile as she laid the table, croissants and coffee.

  There was a bottle of water on the side table: Georgie was sure she hadn’t put it there. She unscrewed the lid and drank, a gulp then sipping, carefully. Still no movement from Holly; Cat was snoring slightly, one nostril squeezed shut, mouth open. Neither of them knew what her life was, not even Cat, not really. Cat had only been to the house when it was empty of Tabs, of Tim. Looking round Georgie’s kitchen and laughing at how clean it was. At Georgie hopping off her stool to wipe a wine spill as if she was going to be arrested, that was what Cat had said, laughing and frowning at once. ‘Chill, George. You want to see the tip my kitchen is, I’m surprised health and safety hasn’t been round.’

  The air in the room seemed to thicken, hot: she felt it on her cheeks, struggled upright. And then abruptly Georgie knew she was going to be sick. She stumbled out of bed, knocking painfully into a chair, keeping going.

  The bathroom lurched at her: it was cramped, cheap, tiled in brown and orange. Toilet bowl and bidet side by side and she only just got there in time, and vomited: she didn’t even have to heave, it poured out of her, hot and sour. Sweat beaded across her forehead, under her arms: the porcelain was cold under her hands, against her cheek, she felt poisoned, sick. She could see the crust inside the toilet bowl of ancient scale and it came again, and again, until her belly was sore with the effort and she leaned back, sweating, against the bathroom wall.

  The cold tile against her back, hair plastered to her damp cheek, Georgie looked down at herself. She shivered; she was half naked. The slip she’d bought specially for the occasion (although she’d never have said that, she’d have said, It’s nothing special though it was silk), that she’d laid out carefully on the pillow last night, had rucked up. One knee up, the other leg stretched out, her round thigh, a nick on her shin where she’d caught herself shaving, painted toenails, white, white skin. There was something funny about her knee. It hurt. Georgie shivered again, looking down at it.

  Something was embedded in it, a bit of gravel? She put her hands palm down on the tiled floor to push herself upright and they were sore too, grazed in the ball of the thumb, the palm. A bruise on her shin. Her body in that flash of a second seemed to belong to someone else, taken apart and reassembled, sore at the joints. Her head stuffed with cotton wool, or mould, a grey blur where last night should be. Outside she could hear a jackhammer going somewhere, shockingly loud.

  Georgie closed her eyes and made herself keep still. It had been so long since she had a hangover she’d forgotten what it was like. That nasty feeling that you’ve done something awful, said something stupid and everyone is talking about you now. It was chemical. That was all.

  Last night. Wait and you’ll remember: she waited. Taxis with their lights on, hissing past in the street. It had been raining. A hot night. Then swaying in the hotel’s cramped hall as they let themselves in, the bulbs too bright in ugly wall sconces, the empty reception desk, the little bell. A flash of memory came then, she remembered leaning towards it, laughing, her hand hovering over the bell and someone had stopped her, shushed her.

  The worn carpet on the narrow staircase coming up to meet her too fast. Now Georgie’s eyes blinked back open – she’d tripped. Tripped on the stairs. Now she looked down at her knee. A wave of nausea came with the lurch of memory and she scrabbled back to the toilet bowl, hair hanging down either side of her face but there was nothing but a streak of yellow bile left. Georgie reached for the toilet flush, feeling the sweat of shame and sickness on the back of her neck and her upper lip as the water swirled in the bowl.

  Behind her she heard the door open and weakly, her palms still sore, everything still wrong, wanting Cat, she turned.

  Holly was leaning against the doorjamb, holding a bottle of cola. She was wrapped in pale silk, something short with deep sleeves. ‘Well,’ she said with a sigh and stepped inside, pulling the door closed behind her. ‘One of those nights, hey.’ Long legs, gleaming. A flash of no knickers as she crouched and then she was sit
ting beside Georgie against the wall, smelling of perfume, eyes smudged with last night’s make-up, sharp knees raised. Georgie felt a kind of despair come over her, she didn’t know at what, at Holly’s scent, her smoothness, the pale expensive silk swathing her, at her not being Cat. She leaned away, pushing helplessly at the robe to protect it from her own sour smell, sweat and sickness.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Holly, jostling her. Impatient but not unkind, and Georgie felt tears just waiting, hot behind her eyes. Holly held out the bottle and Georgie took it. She sipped: waiting to see which way the sugar would go. It stayed down. Better. She offered the bottle back to Holly, who shook her head, one eyebrow raised.

  Tabs when she was sick, wanting Fruit Shoot. Mum bringing Ribena to Georgie, way back when. Something settled, gingerly, inside her.

  Holly rested her head back against the tiled wall and Georgie stole a glance sideways. It had been so dark in the bar last night, just a blur of twinkling disco light and the different colours of bottles behind the bar, she’d hardly got a look at Holly. Just the impression, legs and hair and the flash of teeth when she smiled. The suitcase rattling carelessly across the dance floor when she arrived and her head turning from this side to that side, acknowledging the attention.

  And after? Taxi, hotel, rain. It was a blur. There was something on the edge of the blur. Georgie turned her head as if that might send it away. Send it all away, back into the dark.

  In the cold bathroom light Holly looked a bit rougher round the edges and Georgie felt mournful knowing that made her feel better. Rougher – but not worse. A bit more blurred, more relaxed. Her hair still looked good, expensive, making Georgie wish she got hers done more often. Tentatively Georgie prodded at the normal thought, letting it settle her. Like a nice hot bath, or cleaning her teeth. Hairdresser every two months instead of every six: Tim wouldn’t mind. This was just a hangover, it would pass.