‘OK,’ Lily agreed grudgingly. ‘But you’re still going the wrong way.’
Lily was right, but there was no chance of Grace retracing her steps and having to walk all the way down Brecknock Road with the three of them until they parted ways. ‘I fancy some fresh air,’ Grace lied, and finally Lily was nodding and she was able to walk away.
Going home via a three-mile detour to Kentish Town hadn’t been one of Grace’s better ideas, she thought as she finally reached Junction Road. As far as her grandparents were concerned, Grace lived on the ‘Highgate borders’ but actually Junction Road was firmly situated in Archway and was a great greasy smear of late-opening convenience stores, workmen’s cafés and shops selling a variety of plastic household goods and non-brand detergents, even if it was hemmed in on all sides by Highgate and Dartmouth Park, which the estate agents of North London called ‘charming enclaves’ or ‘bustling cosmopolitan villages’ or ‘in the catchment area for several outstanding local schools’.
Grace turned into Montague Terrace and ran the last few yards home just so she’d get there that little bit quicker, then slowed down so she could quietly open the front door and creep down the hall and up the stairs without waking Eileen on the ground floor.
Although Mrs Beattie, her landlady, charged Grace £140 a week for a one-bedroom flat, it was a bedsit with ideas way, way above its station. Grace had two rooms, which were meant to be separated by a screen door but it had shifted off its castors. One room was the kitchen and dining area but the stove was so old it had vents rather than gas rings, and the other room was where Grace slept on a sofabed, which threatened to give up the ghost each time she transformed it from bed to sofa or back again - it mostly stayed a bed.
The flat could have been lovely. It had high ceilings and a huge bay window behind her bed, but the damp had taken hold and wouldn’t let go. The place had been freshly painted when Grace handed over her deposit, but now there were streaks of moisture staining the walls and mildew collecting on the insides of the windows, and Grace had packed all her worldly goods from clothes to books to magazines to handbags, in huge vacuum-sealed plastic storage bags so they wouldn’t rot.
If she wasn’t always six months in arrears with her rent, Grace could have found somewhere else to live, except she remembered the poky rooms in shared houses she’d looked at when Dan moved into Lily’s and she’d moved out. Still, it would have been nice to have her own bathroom rather than sharing the one on the ground floor with Eileen and Anita and Ilonka, the Polish girls who had the flat above Grace’s.
She could hear the two of them clumping up the stairs now as she realised that drunk and depressed had become sober and depressed and actually it was too cold to be standing in her underwear eating peanut butter straight out of the jar with a teaspoon. It was almost four in the morning and staying up so late that the dark was turning into smudges of light always made Grace feel the chill.
Grace licked the teaspoon thoughtfully and tried to find her happy place, though according to Liam she didn’t actually have one. Liam wasn’t big with the perception, but he’d half-glimpsed something that she thought no one else ever saw. A girl who drifted through life without ever touching the sides. A girl who didn’t get the most cake, because she was something less than all the other girls.
Then again, there was a Marc Jacobs bag in her oven that said otherwise.
Maybe she hadn’t sobered up completely. She definitely had the early morning blahs. That’s why Grace was opening the oven door, her phone clutched in the other hand. If he hadn’t wanted her to call, then he could have just ixnayed on the business card.
And before she could pontificate on the wheres and whys and the
Lily was right, but there was no chance of Grace retracing her steps and having to walk all the way down Brecknock Road with the three of them until they parted ways. ‘I fancy some fresh air,’ Grace lied, and finally Lily was nodding and she was able to walk away.
Going home via a three-mile detour to Kentish Town hadn’t been one of Grace’s better ideas, she thought as she finally reached Junction Road. As far as her grandparents were concerned, Grace lived on the ‘Highgate borders’ but actually Junction Road was firmly situated in Archway and was a great greasy smear of late-opening convenience stores, workmen’s cafés and shops selling a variety of plastic household goods and non-brand detergents, even if it was hemmed in on all sides by Highgate and Dartmouth Park, which the estate agents of North London called ‘charming enclaves’ or ‘bustling cosmopolitan villages’ or ‘in the catchment area for several outstanding local schools’.
Grace turned into Montague Terrace and ran the last few yards home just so she’d get there that little bit quicker, then slowed down so she could quietly open the front door and creep down the hall and up the stairs without waking Eileen on the ground floor.
Although Mrs Beattie, her landlady, charged Grace £140 a week for a one-bedroom flat, it was a bedsit with ideas way, way above its station. Grace had two rooms, which were meant to be separated by a screen door but it had shifted off its castors. One room was the kitchen and dining area but the stove was so old it had vents rather than gas rings, and the other room was where Grace slept on a sofabed, which threatened to give up the ghost each time she transformed it from bed to sofa or back again - it mostly stayed a bed.
The flat could have been lovely. It had high ceilings and a huge bay window behind her bed, but the damp had taken hold and wouldn’t let go. The place had been freshly painted when Grace handed over her deposit, but now there were streaks of moisture staining the walls and mildew collecting on the insides of the windows, and Grace had packed all her worldly goods from clothes to books to magazines to handbags, in huge vacuum-sealed plastic storage bags so they wouldn’t rot.
If she wasn’t always six months in arrears with her rent, Grace could have found somewhere else to live, except she remembered the poky rooms in shared houses she’d looked at when Dan moved into Lily’s and she’d moved out. Still, it would have been nice to have her own bathroom rather than sharing the one on the ground floor with Eileen and Anita and Ilonka, the Polish girls who had the flat above Grace’s.
She could hear the two of them clumping up the stairs now as she realised that drunk and depressed had become sober and depressed and actually it was too cold to be standing in her underwear eating peanut butter straight out of the jar with a teaspoon. It was almost four in the morning and staying up so late that the dark was turning into smudges of light always made Grace feel the chill.
Grace licked the teaspoon thoughtfully and tried to find her happy place, though according to Liam she didn’t actually have one. Liam wasn’t big with the perception, but he’d half-glimpsed something that she thought no one else ever saw. A girl who drifted through life without ever touching the sides. A girl who didn’t get the most cake, because she was something less than all the other girls.
Then again, there was a Marc Jacobs bag in her oven that said otherwise.
Maybe she hadn’t sobered up completely. She definitely had the early morning blahs. That’s why Grace was opening the oven door, her phone clutched in the other hand. If he hadn’t wanted her to call, then he could have just ixnayed on the business card.
And before she could pontificate on the wheres and whys and the
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