Twelve
Lime sour gives more of what the mouth wants. Billie wanted that label to be dumb. Dumb like everything. She liked lime sour. Her mouth liked it. Her mouth as separate from face or head. Its likes and dislikes. “I want this,” her mouth would say. “I want it.” Her stomach might bitch. Her gut. Her poop. Her shit, she corrected herself. The word was shit, not baby words Mum used. Her body may reject the dry acid. But her mouth would eat the whole pack. And the label was dumb because she’d been sold-to. An advertised product. She bought it. She saw those dumb ads: teens—like she would soon be—pulling faces, twisting their noses, playing up to the camera at the sourness of candy. The word was candy, not sweets, like Mum still said. What did sweets even mean? This was candy. She saw it and bought it. Like everyone. They were sold-to. She knew there was too much buying and selling. Too much everything. But what the mouth wants.
The hotel wasn’t smart. But the staff were all colours. The neighbourhood was modern. She got likeable pictures. Wretched, going round with Mum and Dad. But friends had happy families, so should she. Here for a week, every day seeing things. Mum liked experience. Dad liked shopping. Billie wanted to wander. To follow side streets. But, here for a week, they had to Do Things. To make Best Use of time. Mum told her not to chew with her mouth wide. But everyone did.
She liked London. She envied girls who lived here. These girls: her age but tall, ready shaped. She saw their lives unfold with fizzy swagger, each stride bringing close the parties and chances, the attractions. Her town was a blister so small she knew everything. But however long someone lived in London, there’d always be new secrets.
She liked the Tube. She didn’t like Mum and Dad checking maps on the Tube. Pressing their phones together. Pointing and quoting. Making plans out loud. She’d huddle in her coat. Slip away. Let someone stand between her and the parents. For a moment, look like she was by herself, stretching to grip the bar, using her phone for chat. Everyone had happy families and hers was uneventful. Every year—some years twice—they went on holiday. Norfolk or Devon, that was okay. The locals were mad so her parents didn’t look so implausible. France and Spain were embarrassing. The parents got stupid. Billie learned local useful words, to be smart. She got them on guided tours, so they didn’t stick out so much. But their bad behaviour was cringey in London. People here were from everywhere. They had issues. They survived. It wasn’t enough to see the sights. To chat, in public, about how quick they could see the sights. The parents were obvious tourists. They shamed her.
The Tube was busy and smelled of the lime sour she couldn’t stop chewing. There was nowhere to spit. She wouldn’t get a tissue from her pocket. It would look like being sick. She leaned against the glass, her parents a fidgety wall. Between their scrolling shoulders, young women—she guessed after work—headed out for the night. What summer girls did. Finish work early and straight out. They didn’t go home to change clothes, like she had to after school. Mum asking when she’d be back, dropping stupid hints about things Billie already knew. Girls went to bars to drink wine, meet friends and delight in the moment. If they got home at midnight or one, that was on them. Billie pushed back into the glass. Stretched her spine. Let her legs sway with the train. The squeal as it chewed the rails. The stream of tunnel walls. Bodies agitated, claiming space. Dad couldn’t stand against them. He let himself get shuffled. Billie stretched her spine. Stiffened her legs. Tasted lime sour.
They were going to Angel, some place Mum wanted to see. Billie thought about a picture with a Tube sign that said Angel. But that was cringe. She replied to chat so everyone saw her smooth thumbs. Busy. A busy young woman. On the Tube. Going somewhere. Mum smiled at her and Billie had to fake one. She hated when her mother wore that tee shirt. The woman didn’t listen to that music. Fake to wear it. Sometimes they nearly talked, like friends with their mums. Mum asked what she followed, what she hoped for. Snooping. Trying to keep her attached. To keep it the three of them, not two and one. But Billie was a year into secondary school. In quiet times she had plans. Not solid, but stronger, as she learned her way around. Her body was changing, she felt its insistence. The acne she blitzed. Running till she was dizzy. That ache and the blood. Mum was kind and practical. Billie was buzzed. The blood was more of her. Slick, giddy proof they couldn’t hold her forever.
Of course they gathered her way before the station. That was their play. To be stupidly ready. When they went to France and Spain, Dad got them to the airport hours before time. To sit in a hallway surrounded by tacky luggage. Billie wanted to wait for the buzzer. To jump from the train as the doors snatched at her. To dance in smooth triumph. But they gathered her. One each side. Like a hostage.
Another crowded station. A city fit for so many. With corners and niches where lives could catch and grow. These strong women, their colours and ink anticipating bright futures. Their skin, resolute armour against the world. Though her hoodie and jeans were real, Billie was too much the child. Bare makeup. Flat hair. An untrained body that hadn’t found its flow. These people guarded her when she needed the highwire feeling of letting go. They steered her to the escalator. Told her to stand on the right, like she didn’t know that. Escalators were to form her muscles. To run the metal teeth. To climb away.
The second, the long escalator, drawing up through space. Drawing her to future time. She watched ads scroll by. They hadn’t booked for these shows. All the London shows and they kept their evenings empty. To eat dinner and walk around. She didn’t know these shows, the reviews, the actors they praised. The lives of these people. But this was their city, with space to begin.
The parents told her be quick through the gate. Like she was the one slowed things up. They told her be quick, then stopped—just stopped—right in the entrance. In the place people wanted to move. Of course they had to check their apps, to look lost and unadventurous. She pulled the ball of chewed gunk from behind her teeth, a fleeting breath of lime on the warm air. Programmed, sold-to, she looked for a bin. Then corrected herself, flicked the spit wad on the floor.
His elbow took her shoulder, knocked her aside. The man on the phone said some fucking kid blocked the exit. He said she didn’t look like she’d been in the city before.
Nineteen
This Boy was always sleepy. When he stayed over, he took all the space in her room. She got morning-ready, showered and flossed. This Boy, still in bed, maybe dreamed of her a little. Done for the year. Mid-June, already done. His exams sure to unlock a triumphant autumn. A mathematician, his exams had answers. His response to questions precise. Unjustly, mathematicians didn’t present a summer show beneath the cool gaze of successful alumni and, worse, the agents. Not agents. Stringers for agents. The ones who got paid by the find. She should be a find. If she got to rehearsal.
Loose in summer things, she packed her bag—two changes of clothes and the script. Off the book, she still packed the script. Flask of tap water. Her juggling balls, for spare hand-eye moments. Her housemates cooked, played music, built long, elaborate search strings to book travel the furthest the cheapest. For summer. Just beginning. The long, deep breath.
If she left This Boy asleep, he’d be gone before she got back. If she tried to wake him, his sleepy arms would unpack her again. She liked it, again. But that didn’t present a summer show. A pass of blusher. A streak of mascara. Green shadow. Bare makeup. Her tanned skin. The flat hair she left down. Useful hair. It twisted to any style. Easily gathered beneath a wig.
This Boy, articulate limbs. An anatomy of shadow. A core of truthful action. When they met at that party, he told her—no one ever told her—the beauty of imaginary numbers. She recited, often: “The imaginary unit is the square root of minus one.” It centred her, this fictive notation. After the party they went outside where streetlamps polished the flagstones. She thought: This Boy will keep me busy. This Boy will do.
Today she let him sleep. Her name flung from the kitchen. Her friend, eating toast, said they’d go to the open-air theatre tonight, if rehearsals didn’t run on. Open-air was doing Dream. Mid-June, of course it was Dream. Titania by urban moonlight. Her friend’s sister was Hermia, let down and hard-handed. Her friend’s sister walked this path brief years before. She modelled, for cruelty-free beauty. Her friend’s sister got work. Billie always took invitations, even when her body complained. It was good to make good memories. It kept This Boy on his toes.
The front room boys were exercising, straining after each other’s range. Not singers, not opera-level. Good all rounders. Swift toes and an educated larynx, they could shape-shift to any niche, in these budding years. Billie chanced her voice round the door, squawked just shy of the tune. For their outraged reaction. Their ribbons and squealing. One told her: don’t give up the day job, dear, whatever that is. Delight inflating her muscles, she picked up her wheel and jogged downstairs.
Along Taviton Street familiar windows gaped with heat. Parched darkness in piled kitchens and breath-stirred bed-settees. This black gauze curtain escaped its frame to nuzzle bricks, to whip back on the curled breeze. She knew people in this street. Worked with some. Admired others. A few she avoided. Music and singing, cooking and laughter enthralled her. Actors, dancers, economists, chemists, unruly mathematicians would remember these days. And she was here by right. Even now, that tripped her. From a small idea, she worked, she tried, she got better. She passed the audition. Here by right. She’d prove it to the people who should claim her success and didn’t.
She pushed her wheel through Gordon Square, dusty paths from rainless weeks, trees panting on the still air. The man who swept and tidied said Hello. He always did. He detained her with news of the park. Not personally. She read in his actions, his precise manner, he must educate everyone. He lived in Barnet. The flowers came from Barnet. Reared in nursery beds then sprung, surprised, from essayed earth. Their rootless thrill at separation. Trucked here and dug in, for now, to colour summer. These flowers, the transient show-offs to spite the old trees. The old trees grew when the blue plaques lived here. When those people did what was thought praiseworthy then. Before the shrapnel of moonlit skies. Before the university stole the façades. He always told Billie the same and, true in her craft, she responded the same way. She reached to achieve the same intonation, the same gesture, each morning. Truthful consistency, worth more than effect.
At the corner of Woburn Square, a young woman in a black top and short black skirt tried not to hold her body in a pose of waiting. But what else would she do. Billie saw her, on early start mornings. Dressed to show good, firm legs in nylons. On the edge of walking, but tethered. The man she waited for scarcely a trophy. Maybe a junior academic. That scruffy, hammy moment between PhD and failed middle age. A waterproof jacket—in bone dry summer—and Hamlet’s shoulders. The girl sidestepped into him—a coarse, unmusical move. With restrained, precise violence, he elbowed her away. Whatever words she rehearsed by night swallowed in shrill disappointment. An animal sound, squeezed from her chest. Billie would practise that noise. That stranded gesture. It should be truthful. The waterproof hurried to the engineering building. The girl stood destroyed.
At the corner of Malet Street, Billie checked her wheel. Twisted its bolts double tight. Pressed hard on the saddle. The quick move to spin a unicycle was hug the gutter. When she learned, she did it that novice way: pedals at three and nine and clench with her groin. She found it ungainly. Now she tipped the wheel forward and jumped to the mount in one breath, feet working the instant they took the pedals, arms twirling a delicate balance. Left into Malet Street, structuring the rhythm of the ride. A skill of strength and poise. She improved every day.
In gaps between trucks she rode figures of eight, touching Birkbeck, the theatre, Senate House, the medical school. Beneath limes consumed by aphids, honeydew glinting the gutter. A rain of sugar, rotting paint, smearing stone, shining the tar with honey. She flicked her wheel clear of its pools but felt the catch of sooty, sticky ground. Soon, the limes would flower, their crowns abundant. Prim white folds with a yellow eye, clustering temptation. In gaps between trucks, the trees would sing with bees. Their honey dark with aphid dew. Eating toast with her friend, they’d spread honey from lime nectar. They’d revel in its sharp sweetness. Its dark liquidity from the dew of aphids gorged on tree rind, excreted sugar. They’d establish moves and gestures around the tactility of honey. As she read for the next thing and the next. In the moment. Off the book.
To the end of the street, along and down, to test her nerve. Skimming the old walled garden. The sunk retreat. The black bricks of unrealised windows. Crossing traffic against the lights. The embrace of imminent danger the mark of her method. To be that flash of balance, in the windscreens of machinery.
At the corner of Chenies Street, at the rehearsal studio, she perfected the graceful drop. Slow, then stop. A split second suspended and the wheel slid from beneath her. Extra points for lifting the cycle without breaking stride. She swiped through the cracked wood doors, sensing, momentarily, the touch of hands before hers. The generations who walked this path. To inhabit other lives.
These rooms were brushed and bare. Right for serious work. The distractions of glamour had no jurisdiction between the text and the act. Paint was worth more than gold. She got coffee and shuffled the script. No need. But she carried it here. Each action must have purpose.
Warm voices and caring bodies around her. How could she belong anywhere but here. Everyone bitched their rent and loans and the business. Everyone loathed the lucky and well-connected. She knew her chances were slim; she took that deal. She’d hold to this, whatever high tide came against her. If the people who should believe in her didn’t, she always had her friends.
Twenty-Six
Last delivery, headed back west. Tall, muscled, fit. Down the broke-back dip of the South Colonnade she switched out the electric motor to work her calves. The cargo bike, empty now, a box of air, shuddered, threatened to run. But her body was strong, her mind sharp to slice the hot-rodding traffic. These chrome stacks that played so imposing, just people in shirts and brogues waiting their treatment pack, their vitamin mix, their single source honey. The fibres to make them look gym fresh, delivered by a creature of biceps and ink, at peak physical. Headed back west, as the sun made silk of high windows.
When it rained her hair gripped her spine like wire, and she rejoiced she never once worked in these places. Some would. A month’s temping. A short-term contract. Then they weren’t available for calls. They chose firm ground. The sly comfort of regular money. For her, every month was a sweat, appeasing her housemates. But these were her acts. Each act had purpose. Riding the bike, dropping packets, scrabbling for cash was truth committed in every moment. Realised truth, not resemblance. The reality of cargo resisting her legs. The honesty of rain in her clothes. The endless insufficiency in her stomach. It made her a presence. It got her through calls. The truth of these streets embraced her.
A shifting sky. Sharp light on the water. By Cubitt Steps she nudged the bike over the pavement and up to the rail. The security guards would tell her to move. They welcomed these opportunities. It gave them an outlet.
Cans of ready-mix margarita. She’d learned to like it warm and shaken. Warm with the road. Shaken by muscles. Cans from a friend of a friend. A trending brand. An artisan campaign, fronted by that girl she used to share with. Her face all over town. Swift light and blusher adored her. Billie slipped her earbuds, music residue in her brain. Sound swarmed her. Traffic between the Colonnade’s stop-start lights. Diving ducks around the box-frame islands. The split-twig crackle of children running by.
Below, swimmers tensed their limbs against flickering water. Subscribed to a block of tame river. When she swam in the Thames there was no one to admire or save her. In early hours, below stern bridges and cement steps. Turning over and over. Tunnelling through silt. Pale fish—how had she not known there were fish in the Thames—slipping around her, sluggishly startled from mindless rest.
At Cubitt Steps straight lines and primary colours drew everything safe. Breezy light whipped from pocket waves. Figures hurried around her long limbs, her thighs saturated with savage depictions flying high over her knees. Vanilla below, for costume. Towers above the water multiplied reflections. Each window housed an “if.” Circumstance poised to action. What would she do “if” she were them? To make their actions true. Only by inhabiting them could she find justification, true to circumstance and against habit. Figures around her lived their moment. To be them, to be true to them, the experience must be correct. Each action logical to circumstance. These were her means, the architecture of her truth. Not truth for its own sake. But to master the truthful effect.
She could explain, debate, wrestle this out with people who understood. People who saw what she grasped for. Too many she’d shared with, people she liked, had slipped, fallen to imitation and cliché. So many gone. The hopeful classmates of working sisters. The fresh-eyed, keen from provincial bedrooms, who burned their shuttered energy and faded. That boy she kept—where had he gone. Those faint recollections in a far-away town. That woman and man she didn’t speak to now.
Tequila and lime created her mouth as citric. She scrolled the risks she might take to grow, become, inhabit. An open call. Cressida, in an urban Troilus. She stood a chance. She was off the book. Do to this body what extremes you can, / But the strong base and building of my love / Is as the very centre of the Earth… They’d see her tomorrow afternoon. Tonight she’d swim in cold sweet mud. A flash of will and propulsion beneath grey water. Between the warm skin of her satchel the corked test tube, pure in itself, carried a sharp reminder. Drop by drop it fell through the keyhole slit of the drink can. She arranged herself to this: strong knees raised, back straight, elbow at ninety degrees, wrists controlling position and flow. Each part of every movement authentic to the act. The test tube of juice squeezed from a lime she stole to feel the urgency of theft. The green flesh torn and squashed for its sting on her fingers. She added more lime to the drink. Her mouth wanted sour. When she looked back in seven, fourteen, twenty-one years, she’d know these moments as her foundation, when she became who she’d be. Not compromised. Not wasted by time. Still possible. She drank to the sparkling river. To all her many creations. She felt as she had at the start.
