As she flops back against the shuttered shopfront she thinks to herself that she is living in a state of perfect equality. At her level – the level of legs and knees and ankles – everyone is the same. The shoes varied, of course, but she can no longer tell the expensive ones from the cheap ones. Her own shoes, dirty brown men’s suede brogues, she had found in a skip. They were too big and hurt her feet. She will find a new pair, but at the moment her every thought is for her next fix.

  She glances at the clock across the road. Her sight, like everything else, is fading, but she can tell that there are ten hours to go to until she can make her connection. She doesn’t have enough money. There are now four pound coins on the cardboard and some loose change. Not nearly enough.

  She starts crying, a series of audible sobs. In truth, she is long beyond crying spontaneously. It is a performative act, an act of commerce. A weeping woman, even one as destroyed as she is, usually produces results. Sure enough, within a minute or so, a middle-aged man wearing a business suit bends down to her.

  ‘Are you alright?’ His voice is tender, quiet.

  She nods, giving the impression of courage she hopes, then carries on crying.

  ‘Can I get you some food?’

  Fuck off, she thinks. She shakes her head. Her voice, when it emerges, is deliberately tiny.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Do you want to talk?’

  She’s had enough. Her voice comes out low and broken.

  ‘Please, can you spare me some change?’

  ‘I can buy you some food if you like.’

  She shakes her head and the man hesitates, then walks away. Then, almost immediately, another punter, this one a woman, comes over and puts £5 in her cup. This is more like it. The street woman can’t be bothered to thank her; she is also beyond gratitude. There is only pointless survival.

  She has a limited amount of tears to manufacture, but she keeps doing the best she can, sometimes managing nothing more than a dry sobbing. After an hour, she has £40 and a ham sandwich from Pret. She decides to take a break. Gathering up her sleeping gear and her bright blue laundry bag, she begins stumbling towards the Strand where many of the others in the homeless diaspora congregate.

  When she gets there, she recognizes only Davy Greenjacket. She doesn’t like him very much. A huge man with no teeth and partly blind, who always wore the same stained green anorak, he would sometimes make a grab at her, although she suspects he wouldn’t know what to do with her if she threw her ruined, naked body down in front of him. And she isn’t about to try and find out. So she keeps walking, nodding to Davy as she goes. He stares through her.

  The air is cool today but not unbearably cold and a thin sunshine comes through the clouds. She would have once thought it a beautiful day, but now her mind can’t really settle on anything long enough to appreciate it one way or the other. It flicks between the past and the present, but rarely the future except in the case of meeting her connection. Nothing else has pleasure for her, not even food. Not even the brown sugar for that matter – it just stops her getting the horrors for a while.

  She wonders idly if she should try suicide again, but knows it is just a fantasy, like the occasional one she had of getting back on her feet again. She knows she doesn’t have the courage. An old blues song drifts into her head… tired of living… scared of dying… She can’t remember the tune. She had liked the blues once. Hadn’t she? Or was that someone else? Her thoughts are clouds that you can see through, that part and drift and disappear and are always pregnant with rain.

  She becomes aware of the feel of the wet patch on her jeans – or rather the sharp smell that drifts up from it. There is a closed charity shop in this street and someone has put a bag outside it. She stops and rummages around, finding a pair of jeans with designer holes in them – stupid! – and a green frilly dress.

  She explores further and locates a pair of men’s flannel trousers. She sniffs them – they appear to be sufficiently clean. In full view of anyone who happens to walk past, she roughly pulls off her jeans – no knickers, she never bothered with those anymore – throws the urine-soaked jeans into the gutter and pulls on the flannel trousers. They are far too big, but she keeps a bit of rope in her backpack and she ties this around the waist. It was good enough and the trousers were warm and dry. She always dresses as a man; it means far less hassle.

  She unzips the laundry bag and takes a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste out. For some reason, she has always tried to keep her teeth up to scratch even as everything else falls apart. She can’t bear the taste of her own mouth nowadays. It is stale and smoky like a used firework.

  She pulls a bottle of expensive mineral water from her jacket pocket, taken earlier from a bin, swills, douses the toothbrush and, for the next three minutes, brushes carefully. Then she sits back down and, refreshed, pulls out her cardboard sign and the plastic cup. She begins crying again with renewed gusto.

  Chapter Five

  February 2020: London

  Frankie is sitting in the bath, staring at the ceiling while idly trying to fit his big toe into one of the taps, when his phone, balanced on the rim, starts vibrating. Seeing who is calling, he picks up immediately, albeit anxious that he might drop it into the water, which seethes with foaming pine-scented bath oil.

  ‘Dad!’

  He has failed to register in his excitement that it is a FaceTime call. He switches the video off.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That’s a sight I’m never going to be able to unsee.’

  ‘This is a nice surprise.’

  He tries to sound cheerful, but he knows he is coming across as anxious. China always puts him on his guard. Hearing the false note in his voice, he props himself up further and hits the speaker button. Immediately, perhaps because he is nervous, he breaks wind in the water.

  ‘What’s that noise?’

  ‘What noise?’

  ‘Gurgling. Did you just fart?’

  ‘No. To what do I owe the honour, my darling daughter?’

  Nodge, off camera, watches her carefully as China rolls her eyes.

  ‘Do you have to speak in that stupid way, Dad?’

  ‘What stupid way? Hold on a minute.’

  Putting the phone to one side, he pulls himself out the bath, pops the plug and starts vigorously drying himself.

  ‘ “To what do I owe the honour?” What are you, the Lord Mayor?’

  ‘It’s just an expression.’

  China puts the phone on mute and turns to Nodge and Owen.

  ‘He’s annoying me already. And he’s in the bath.’

  She looks pleadingly at Nodge, hoping for a commuting of her sentence. Nodge simply nods towards the phone. China takes it off mute.

  ‘China? Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m still here. Dad, look. I want to ask you a favour.’

  The sound of the water draining suddenly becomes very loud, so that Frankie can hardly hear what China is saying. Still naked, he turns the speaker off and puts the phone to his ear.

  ‘Of course. Anything.’

  China, glancing at Nodge again with a final pleading look, takes a deep breath. Owen, who has joined him, remains similarly unmoved.

  ‘Can I come and stay with you for a little while?’

  Frankie wraps the towel around his waist; it feels indecent to be naked while he is talking to his daughter even though she can’t see him. The noise of the draining bath still makes it difficult to hear.

  ‘Can you what?’

  ‘I said, can I come and stay with you for a little while?’

  Frankie feels a wave of exultation, but his pride prompts him to feign indifference.

  ‘Well, this is very sudden. Any particular reason?’

  ‘No, no particular reason. I’m just bored with Brighton and I want a break.’

  Frankie puts the phone down and pulls on a pair of underpants. Struggling with his jeans, getting one leg in without being able to find the entrance for the other, he topples over and falls on the bed, dropping the phone in the process.

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘Shit?’

  Frankie grabs the phone and puts it back on speaker again while he tries to regain control of his trousers. The sound of the draining bath has subdued to a damp whisper.

  ‘No, no. Not shit. I mean, when?’

  There is a brief pause at the other end. Then China, seeing there is no escape under the steely gaze of Nodge, answers.

  ‘Now.’

  Frankie has both legs in the trousers now and is doing up his belt, but he stops in his tracks, leaving the buckle to dangle.

  ‘What do you mean – now?’

  ‘As in today.’

  Frankie feels himself to be on the back foot. Roxy is coming for supper in a few hours’ time and staying the night to celebrate their ‘anniversary’, so called. He fumbles with the buckle on his trousers, accepting reluctantly that it needs to be another notch looser, then sits gingerly on the edge of the bed, a furrow of concern burying itself in his forehead.

  ‘Why the rush? What really happened?’

  Nodge nods at her and rotates his open hand in the air to indicate that she should be honest. For the last time China gives him an imploring look, then her shoulders drop.

  ‘To tell you the truth, I had a huge fight with Mum and Silas. I walked out. So I need to stay with you for a couple of weeks.’

  Frankie feels a guilty glow of pleasure at this confirmation that life in Brighton was less rosy than Veronica advertised it.

  ‘That’s a shame. What was the fight about?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I get there.’

  Frankie’s eyes dart around the bedroom as if hoping to find a solution inscribed on the walls. Finding nothing, his eyes rest on the cheap white IKEA wardrobe. The TV fixed on the wall shows his reflection in blackened colour.

  ‘Well… ’ says Frankie cautiously.

  ‘What?’ After being so reluctant to visit, now sensing a hitch, China feels an urgent need to claim her place.

  ‘It’s just that… Roxy is meant to be staying here tonight.’

  ‘So what? Just cancel her.’

  ‘I can’t really.’

  ‘Let’s talk when I get there. I’m on the train now. Just going into a tunnel. About to cut off. But please, Dad. Just the two of us, okay?’

  ‘But… ’

  ‘I’ll explain everything later. See you in a little while. Bye.’

  China hangs up. Nodge and Owen clap lightly and China bows.

  Meanwhile, in the Golborne Road, Frankie stares at the phone and feels the acid of anxiety pooling in his gut.

  * * *

  Frankie, determined to be as good as his word after promising Roxy her anniversary dinner, has even bought a cookbook, Cooking for Lovers. He knows he’s not a good cook, but ever since Veronica has gone, he has been doing his best to train himself. Cooking for one is a dispiriting business, however, so he’s out of practice.

  This time he’s taken the afternoon off to prepare, gone shopping in several fancy supermarkets searching for ingredients that are obscure to him, Ras el Hanout and White Miso being two of the most tricky to source, taking him through the portals of food stores displaying many ingredients he hitherto never realized existed.

  He has bought some beef filet – Roxy loves meat; cost an arm and a leg – some balsamic vinegar that was 15 sovs, just to dip a £5 focaccia in. He has sought out aromatic candles, purchased flowers, tidied and cleaned the flat and hoovered with his scratched and battered Henry. Roxy was scheduled to arrive at seven.

  Then the phone call from China had come.

  Now he stands and stares out of his bedroom window, trying to gather some scraps of resolve. Eventually, he sits down on the lattice chair in the corner of the room and, with a sense of acute trepidation, he FaceTimes Roxy. She picks up almost immediately. She is at the nail salon on the Uxbridge Road, a pale fluorescent light illuminating her face, casting menacing angles of shadow. Although Frankie hasn’t said anything at all yet, he is aware that she is gazing piercingly into her camera, her face held close, as if already locked into combat mode.

  ‘Hi, Rocks,’ says Frankie, falteringly. Her telepathic abilities always unnerve him.

  ‘You’d better not be calling to cancel our supper,’ she says, then turns to her left and bellows to someone off camera.

  ‘Busarakham! Tidy your station, it’s a tip. Now!’

  Frankie hears a murmur of apology from one of the tiny Thai girls Roxy employs, who passes into the camera field, dressed in a pure white outfit and scrambling in haste towards the massage bed that is her responsibility. Roxy’s eyes swivel back to the camera phone in front of her. She stares again into the lens, waiting for Frankie to reply. Her business persona is so different from the sentimental and slightly frivolous woman he knows when she is off duty.

  ‘Not exactly,’ ventures Frankie.

  ‘What you mean “Not exactly”?’

  Roxy’s eyes harden and she brings the phone still closer to her face. Frankie, seeming to see tiny yellow flames in the depths of her pupil, focuses on a corner of the screen so that her expression is only in peripheral vision.

  ‘It’s China.’

  ‘What about her?’

  To Frankie’s momentary relief, Roxy’s eyes are distracted again.

  ‘Busarakham! Not like that, for fuck’s sake. Use a clean cloth.’

  Her gaze returns to Frankie, more intense than ever.

  ‘She wants to come and stay,’ says Frankie.

  Roxy nods as if she has always been expecting some such foolery.

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since now.’

  ‘I see. So when is she arriving?’

  Her voice has coarsened, a far cry from the velvet pampering tones she uses for customers in the salon.

  ‘That’s the thing. In an hour or two – I think.’

  Frankie takes his eyes of the screen altogether and lets his eyes focus on a white bird flying past the window. He makes a mental note to get some blinds fitted instead of the tatty curtains that, when open, leave the interior of the room open to the sight of anyone living in the flats on the opposite side of the road.

  ‘Why aren’t you looking at me, Frankie?’

  The white bird disappears. He reluctantly draws his eyes back to the screen. Someone has turned a light off in the salon so now Roxy seems to peer out of the darkness.

  ‘You are taking the piss? Right?’ she says, her lips straight and thin.

  ‘She just rang. Apparently she’s had a big fight with Silas and Vronky.’

  There is a beat before Roxy speaks again. The background seems to darken yet again, although Frankie doesn’t know if this is just happening in his imagination. Roxy, meanwhile, appears – in the pool of remaining light – to be deathly white.

  ‘So let me get this straight. China, who has been perfectly indifferent to you for the last five years – treats you, in fact, like a piece of garbage – rings up and tell you to drop everything because she’s had a row with her mum. So you just roll over.’

  Frankie now sits on the bed, stares at a small framed photo of China on the bedside table, three years old, gurning for the camera. The expression seems to mock Frankie.

  ‘I never get to see her. Please try to understand. This is a chance for me, Roxy.’

  ‘A chance for what?’

  ‘To start to repair our relationship.’

  ‘It can wait till tomorrow, surely?’

  ‘She’s on the train already.’

  ‘She can stay in a hotel.’

  ‘She’s my daughter.’

  ‘And I’m your partner.’

  ‘Whaddya gonna do?’ he mutters, unable to think of anything else to say.

  ‘Frankie. You’re not Tony Soprano,’ snaps Roxy. ‘More like Toni the ice cream man.’

  ‘It’s silly arguing about it,’ says Frankie, now checking his watch, worried that China will actually ring on the door while he is talking to Roxy, forcing him to cut the call short. ‘Why can’t she just join us for supper? We can still have a nice time.’

  ‘Very romantic. Supper with Titania McGrath. Well, at least I should learn something about my privilege. Which according to her I am fucking marinated in. Busarakham! Not that cloth! Oh, for God’s sake, just go home, why don’t you?’

  Frankie hears a muttered assent at the other end and the Thai woman once again enters the camera field, head bowed, her expression cowed and apologetic.

  ‘I know you and her don’t see eye to eye over politics,’ says Frankie. ‘But you can get through one night, surely? You don’t have to talk to her about illegal immigrants and the betrayal of the white working class.’

  ‘Fine, Frankie. That’s just fucking great.’

  ‘I’ll see if… ’ But before he can finish, the screen goes blank. Roxy has cut off the call.

  Now he’s not even sure if Roxy is going to come or not. Dejectedly, he heads downstairs and into the small kitchen that is divided from the living room by a plasterboard wall. He starts half-heartedly assembling the ingredients for the meal. The prospect of the evening has sent his anxiety levels off the scale. He hasn’t told China that he has failed to cancel his date with Roxy, worried that he might scare his daughter away.

  But maybe, he thinks, with not much confidence, Roxy won’t turn up, things will calm down between the two of them and everything will be fine. Trying to keep hold of this encouraging thought, he turns back to the food preparation. He finds himself focusing on chopping and slicing and grinding and crushing.

  * * *

  At six o’clock, there is a ring at the door. Frankie concludes that it has to be China because Roxy has house keys and China lost hers long ago or, more likely, threw them in a bin in a fit of pique. Opening the door, sure enough, he sees China stands there looking weary but not, for once, especially hostile. She is wearing baggy, shapeless clothes and her brown hair is straggled. On her hands, an assortment of cheap kitschy rings. Her nails are painted an array of different colours and she carries in front of her a large, heavy-looking Hunger Games backpack.