Issy has fallen asleep, her breathing full of uneasy sighs and mutters. I press my nose into the looping strands of her hair, thinking that I can still smell the sea and pine mixed in with her own particular scent.

  London stinks of bodies and petrol fumes, chemicals and rot. When Hettie took us to Harrods to get shoes, I thought my lungs would burst. It’s hard to breathe the gritty air. My neck is grimy every night and my hair feels dirty. I’ve noticed wild things; but they have to be secret and cunning. Foxes slip through the shadows of parked cars at night, rats scuttle between bins. Weeds cling to railings and poke through the pavements near Hettie’s house. People stared when I knelt to feel the small, brave leaves.

  Issy liked Harrods, she wanted to visit all the departments and ride up and down in the lift with the elevator boy wearing his green uniform. ‘When I’m older I’ll buy everything here,’ she said, taking in the sweep of gleaming counters and laden shelves with shining eyes.

  Tomorrow we’ll have breakfast in Hettie’s basement kitchen. Instead of porridge and golden syrup and Mummy singing to the radio, there will be cornflakes with white sugar and triangles of toast. Hettie sits at the head of the table drinking tea out of a cup with a saucer and offers us marmalade scooped into a silver pot. She has a special knife for butter. She looks over her glasses and talks to us in the voice that adults use when they’re not used to talking to children. Hettie is trying so hard to be nice that sometimes it makes my tears start up, hot and blurry, and my throat tightens. She doesn’t look anything like Mummy; she’s short and square and much older. But yesterday I noticed that her eyes were the exact pale blue of Mummy’s, and when she smiles, she has the same dimples.

  13

  The party is in a photographer’s studio, in an old warehouse in Islington. Guests are carted up to the top floor in an ancient goods lift. The metal door shuts behind them with a crash. Isolte puts her hand up, tangling fingers through her hair. She had a perm a couple of months ago, and she still can’t get used to not brushing it. As they are taken slowly, falteringly, upwards, they can hear music and raucous voices getting closer. The lift jolts and lurches to a stop. Ben heaves the door open.

  The couple that came up in the lift with them are Japanese, silent and smiling in flowing Comme des Garçons robes. They follow behind.

  Standing on the brink of the party, Isolte feels slightly sick. She has no idea if anybody knows about her leaving the magazine. Stupidly, she still hasn’t told Ben. It’s been two days now. A kind of obstinate refusal fills her every time she opens her mouth. She’s hanging on to who she was. But she’s not that girl any more, that busy fashion editor wearing the right clothes with a diary full of appointments. She’s frightened that Ben won’t want the new, nothing person she’s become.

  The place is packed. Ben struggles ahead, intent on finding drinks. Isolte follows in his path. There are shouts of greeting and pats on his shoulder as he passes. With an abrupt slither her feet go from under her, sliding through a puddle of liquid. She flails for a moment, gasping, thinking she’s going down, but there’s a steadying hand on her elbow. It remains, grasping her firmly, holding her up. Boy George smiles down from his great height, spiky bleached quiff quivering under a red baseball cap.

  ‘Oops-a-daisy,’ he says. She glances at the mass of badges clustering over the lapels of his jacket. A jumble of letters and colours. She nods her thanks, her hand pulling at her top, smoothing it down.

  ‘Darlings!’ Their host, Jonathan, wears a yellow shirt and a distracted smile. He gestures towards a table loaded with alcohol. ‘Help yourself. Supposed to be some people doing the pouring, but fuck me if I know where they are.’

  Ben is already engrossed in a conversation with a tall black girl with a shaved head. He leans forward with a laugh and puts his hand on her arm, next to three bands of silver enclosing her biceps. Isolte admires the sheen on the girl’s skin, finds herself waiting to see how long Ben’s fingers remain there. With a sigh, she forces herself to turn away. She lets the party suck her in. Bodies part for her as she wanders through the crowd. The music is so loud it’s impossible to be heard without shouting. Some people are attempting to dance–the limited space forcing a contorted bobbing and jigging. A girl with her face powdered white lurches into her, spilling some of her drink over Isolte’s sleeve. The girl hardly bothers to apologise. A huge crucifix swings around her neck. She is wearing a black T-shirt. White lettering across her generous chest shouts Vote Get It Straight by 88.

  Frowning, Isolte makes her way over to the wall, hoping to hide. She dabs at her sleeve, bending awkwardly so that she can use the hem of her skirt, transferring a certain amount of damp and the smell of lager from one fabric to the other. One of the bookers at Models One stumbles past. She stops when she sees Isolte. ‘Hey, babe, how’s it going?’

  ‘Fine.’ Isolte is guarded.

  ‘Did you see the news today? Princess Di visiting AIDS patients? That woman is a saint. Amazing. She was touching this one guy, holding his hand. The poor bloke was crying.’

  ‘Oh, I missed it,’ Isolte says. ‘She is incredible, isn’t she? Best thing to happen to the royal family.’

  ‘There’s Lola. I must say hello. Nice chatting to you, Isolte. By the way,’ she shouts back over her shoulder, ‘sorry to hear about the job.’

  ‘What about it?’ Isolte bluffs.

  The girl grimaces. ‘Like that, is it?’ She puts her finger to her lips. ‘Won’t tell a soul. Promise.’

  So the whole world knows. She has to find Ben. He’ll never forgive her. She pushes her way back through the wall of bodies. This time they don’t give way. There’s laughter, shouts of hilarity, eyes sliding towards her and away. Panic kicks inside her chest. The noise and energy of the party gathers into a coloured cloud roiling at the edge of her vision. She sees Ben; he’s still with the black girl. She’s a model. Isolte can’t remember her name. ‘Hooverville’ by The Christians is playing. Isolte is shoved hard in the ribs; she winces, straining to keep her sights on Ben. He’s wiping his nostrils surreptitiously with the back of his index finger. And she knows by the way he dips his head in that animated, conspiratorial manner that he’ll be impossible to talk to now.

  Panic takes over. She feels as if a fever has her. Sweat prickles. She closes her eyes, opens them again. Stevie is looking across the tops of heads at her, craning to see above the crowd. He’s wearing a red hat. His eyes narrow and he says something to someone out of the corner of his mouth. He laughs, showing his teeth, nostrils flaring violently. Isolte turns round. Taking deep breaths, she makes her way to the door. The Japanese couple are there, heads inclined towards each other, engrossed in earnest conversation. They nod at her gravely. She brushes past them into the corridor, making for the lift.

  Out in the drizzle of the night, she remembers that she’ll have to walk for ages before she has a hope of hailing a cab. The high street is a good ten minutes away. Stevie knows about her. She saw it in his face. He’s going to tell Ben. There’s nothing she can do about it. She walks on, heels clicking on the wet pavements, the impractical shoes already rubbing her ankles.

  She doesn’t belong any more. Not to the party, or the magazine, or the fashion world. Even before she was sacked, she’d been slipping away from the bright sanctuary of that life. If she’s honest, it’s something that’s been happening for weeks–the recurring nightmare has given her a vertiginous sense that something is breaking beneath her. She’s lost focus at work. She keeps remembering things, things that she’s managed to block out for years.

  Isolte pulls her coat around her. She can smell summer in the air, the familiar raw, green under-scent of cut grass and pollen. The leaves are out on the trees. There are tulips clustered in brilliant circles under the trees in the park. But the chill of the evening presses at her, sliding under her skin, making her shiver. Cars roar past, sending waves of dirty spray over the pavement.She crosses a railway bridge, hearing the rush of a train beneath her feet, and notices a group of teenage boys leaning against the wall at the corner of the street. Her heart accelerates. She swallows, clasping her bag tighter to her side. She can feel them staring. One of the boys calls out and the others laugh. She feels ashamed of being afraid of a few spotty youths. But she listens for their sudden footsteps behind her, anticipating the pull on her bag. Are they following? She can hardly hear anything for the blood roaring like an ocean in her head.

  Turning the corner, she sees the lights of the high street and relaxes her grip on her bag, slows her pace. Her chest is tight. It feels bruised, as if she’s fallen down a flight of stairs. Ignoring the blister on her heel, she continues past shops and cafés, scanning the traffic for a taxi. When she sees a black cab with a yellow light she steps into the road, raising her arm as if she knew who she was and where she was going.

  At home, she opens the kitchen cupboards, looking through them, scrabbling past packets and tins, until she finds what she’s searching for. A bottle of red wine, left by Ben.

  Ben. Her job is gone. She’s losing her sister. Everything is falling away. So much has gone already. Will she lose him as well?

  She fumbles in the drawer for the opener. It’s a modern, plastic invention with some kind of complicated lever system. Isolte tries to work it, fails, and clasps the bottle between her knees, using brute strength to pull the cork free. She pours herself a generous glass and walks into the bedroom, the bottle dangling from her fingers, kicking off her heels, shrugging off her clothes, flinging her necklace on the floor, bangles clattering at her feet.

  In bed, she tucks the covers around her and takes a big gulp of red liquid. It’s slightly sour in her mouth, potent. She smells it,earthy and vital, the scent of fruit in it. It reminds her of their mother. She won’t think of Rose. She won’t think of anything or anyone.

  She can hear her phone ringing. It stops. Starts again. There is the distant click of the answer machine. She can hear the tone of her own recorded voice, cheerful and tinny: It’s Issy. Sorry I can’t get to the phone right now. You know what to do. Someone talks urgently. She can hear her name repeated several times. It’s Ben. He is angry. She takes another sip of wine, licking her lips, and another. She begins to feel the edges of things blurring, the softening of the world. The room mellows and expands like an overripe peach. It has the effect of cushioning her. She likes the effect. She finds that the glass is empty and reaches for the bottle. She wakes to find Ben shaking her.

  ‘Isolte! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Her head rattles, snapping back and forth on her neck. Her brain is a pea bouncing from surface to surface, bruised and dented. It hurts. Damn. She’d forgotten he had a key.

  ‘Stop!’ she manages to say, flailing her arms at him. ‘Leave me.’

  ‘Not a chance,’ he growls, ‘not till I’ve got some answers out of you.’

  She whimpers. She only wants to sink back into the lovely pit of oblivion. He can’t possibly expect her to talk.

  ‘Go ’way,’ she manages to say, trying to push her head back under the covers.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Isolte? I had to learn from Stevie of all people!’

  There is cold liquid sliding down her throat. She chokes. Swallows. Water. A lot of it spills down her front, icy and uncomfortable, seeping through the sheets under her.

  ‘God, you’re pissed! A whole bottle! Jesus. Drink up. You need it.’

  More water filling her mouth. It’s hard to swallow. A river of water flooding into her throat. She panics. Her tongue doesn’t work. Her teeth feel like cheese in her gums.

  After that she is sick. She remembers Ben’s arms around her. The floor rearing up to meet her. The lights in the bathroom impossibly bright. She can hear Ben’s words. ‘Trust me… job… Stevie… worried… got into you.’

  Nothing joins up. Nothing makes sense. She is longing to lie down and close her eyes. And then she is lying down, clinging to the mattress, the smell of vomit in her hair, the room spinning like a ride at the fair. She can hear fairground music. The electrifying thunder of the rides.

  *

  She sits between Michael and Viola; John is on the other side of Viola; they are all screaming in unison, hands gripping the bar; the car lurches and turns and turns. Her hair whips across her face, stinging her skin. The neck-cracking movement forces her over to the left. Viola slides into her with a yelp of pleasure-fear. She feels the weight of her twin crushing her. She sees John’s arm around Viola, his fingers gripping her sister’s shoulder tight; John nuzzles into Viola’s ear, saying something. Viola laughs.

  Lights flash. Yellow. Green. Red.

  14

  Today the art lady comes. She has a trolley full of equipment–pens and paper and sticks of glue and pots of glitter. I like the art trolley because it reminds me of primary school. It seems impossible now that there could have been such a safe and innocent place.

  Some patients are making marbled paper, pouring inks into oiled water: spirals of yellows, reds and blues unravelling into a colour-clouded liquid. They hobble around the trolley in their dressing gowns and slippers, peering into the water, dipping paper into trays and pulling it out, sodden with inky swirls. I gaze at them enviously. There’s a little girl there; she bobs and ducks under elbows and arms, eager to see. She isn’t a patient. She is too young for this ward, too plump and healthy. Who does she belong to? Her brown hair falls across her face as she examines the shining paper, her surprised fingers opening like starfish. The art lady ignores the child, patting a patient on the back, exclaiming over the loveliness of the newly coloured paper. They are laying the sheets out to dry now, placing them carefully on the floor at the foot of beds.

  I would like to make marbled paper. But I’m not strong enough. I can’t get out of bed. My body is too heavy: a sack of shingle. I am weighted by the pull of gravity, by the flaps and folds of flesh on my bones. I can feel my cells swelling, spreading, filling up the space under my skin with fat.

  They want me to put on twenty-eight pounds. That’s what he said. Mr Groff leaned back in his important chair, a small, earnest man, wearing a white coat open over his shirt, playing with the end of his tie. ‘We’re aiming for a gain of twenty-eight pounds. Then we’ll be able to discharge you.’ Looking over my shoulder, he’d nodded encouragingly, as if I should be glad about it.

  He’s crazy. That’s two stone. Two boulders strapped to my skeleton, hobbling me, crushing me. They’ve added more calories to the drink. I know they have, and it makes me sick to think of that yellowy fluid, sneaky with fat, sliding into my stomach. I’ve thought about cutting the feeding tube. But if I do that they’ll send me to the psychiatric ward. I don’t want to go there again.

  I will never be free.

  *

  Judy was stick-thin.

  ‘Can’t get any curves in the right places,’ she’d complain, looking down at her chest and pouting, pushing folded tissues into her bra. Her hair and skin glowed bloodless white. She was nasal, slightly asthmatic, impossibly glamorous. The first time she’d acknowledged us, we were crowded next to her and her mum on the sofa, the boys on the floor, watching The Generation Game.

  ‘Cuddly toy, game of Kerplunk!’ we’d yelled, and Judy had turned and offered us each a piece of bubble gum. I felt honoured, as if some foreign princess had presented me with a token from her country. We were at the twins’ house so much, she even began to ask our advice: ‘Does this look all right?’ she’d say, striking poses before us in some new outfit, basking in our admiration. ‘Does my bum look big?’ Frowning, turning to show us her behind. ‘No,’ we’d reply truthfully, looking at her bony bottom, flattened by skin-tight denim.

  As the only girl, she had the privilege of a bedroom to herself. A bed covered in a pink bedspread and heaped with fluffy toys took up most of the space. The dusty dressing table was crammed with make-up, bottles of nail polish and clumps of tangled necklaces and bracelets.

  ‘Come over here,’ she commanded, pushing an avalanche of teddies on to the floor. She lay on the bed, sucking her belly in, grimacing and holding her breath, so Issy could hook a wire clothes hanger into the zip of Judy’s jeans. Issy pulled hard. I knelt, holding the straining halves together. There was a glimpse of white lace, the fuzz of hair sticking through. I’d looked away quickly. The zip bit and slid into place.

  But it was still a surprise when she invited us, ordered us really, to accompany her to the disco. ‘My mate Alison has let me down. Cow. I can’t go on my own, can I?’ She frowned into the mirror in her bedroom. ‘You’re old enough. I’ll put some slap on yer. Make yer look the part.’

  We looked at each other doubtfully. ‘Will the boys come?’ I asked.

  ‘Bleedin’ hope not! What d’you want them fer?’ She stared at me. ‘They’d be an embarrassment.’

  ‘We can’t. Mum doesn’t know,’ I said. Remembering the feel of her hand against my face. Remembering her tears. Lately, she’d been muddled and snappy. She’d begun making rag dolls. Her plan was to sell them at the weekly market outside the town hall. ‘This is going to pay for those new shoes,’ she’d said, brandishing a lop-sided, floppy thing with glazed button eyes. She kept raiding the dressing-up box and all our ceremonial clothes had holes cut out of them.

  Judy wasn’t going to let anything interfere with her plan. She marched us down to the red phone box on the corner. We squeezed in together. It stank of stale piss. One of the panes of glass was missing. Judy took the receiver down and handed it to me. It sat greasy and heavy in my palm.

  Mummy answered after a long time. Hearing my hesitant attempts at persuasion, ‘A disco, it won’t be late… Yes, we’ll be with their older sister,’ Judy rolled her eyes and took the phone from me. ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Love,’ she told our mother in soothing tones, ‘I’ll make sure they get home safe.’ She winked at us as she replaced the receiver.