Eventually she went to a place round the corner, an upstairs place with a sign on the door saying no children no spectators.
It was a week before she could speak properly again, and then all she talked about was how excited and pleased she was with it.
She kept sticking her tongue out at men in the pub, just to see how they’d react.
By the end of the summer she was saying she might have to take it out to get a job.
It was a strange time.
People were slipping out of the city unexpectedly, like children getting lost in a crowd, leaving nothing but temporary addresses and promises to keep in touch.
I didn’t know what to do, there was a feeling of time running out and a loss of momentum, of opportunities wasted.
It was a good summer, long and hot, the day
s cracked open and bare, but it was hard to enjoy when it felt so deadended.
We spent our days on the front doorstep, circling job adverts with optimistic red felt-pens, trying to make plans, talking about travelling, or moving to London, or opening a cafe, each plan sounding definite until the next morning.
I don’t think any of us had the confidence, not for the sort of plans we were making, not for all those websites and fashion boutiques and doughnut shops.
A time of easy certainty had come to an end, and most of us had lost our nerve.
We used to sit on those front steps long into the evenings, long after the conversations had faltered, dragging our duvets downstairs when the stars finally squeezed out, flicking the ringpulls of empty beercans, blowing tunes into empty wine bottles.
Wondering what to do next.
Most of the photos I’ve got were taken in that last week, rushing around, trying to make up for three unrecorded years.
Pictures of the house, my bedroom, the front door with the number painted on it, the view of the street from my window.
But mostly the pictures are of my friends then, drinking tea in the kitchen, piled up in someone’s bed, throwing a frisbee across the street.
And in all the pictures they’re looking straight at the camera, always grinning and waving.
I sat in my room that evening, the phone still in my hand, looking at all those photographs, looking closely, as though I’d not seen them before.
Studying the expressions on their faces, looking for hidden details.
It was strange how important the pictures felt, like vital documents that should be kept in a fireproof tin instead of being blu-tacked and pinned to the wall.
Somehow, although we spent the whole summer doing nothing, it felt like the most significant part of my life, until now.
I dialled the number again, and it was engaged.
I don’t think I knew what I was going to say. I don’t know why I thought I’d find it any easier to tell her than Sarah.
I think I thought that, once I’d managed to say it, she’d at least be the one who would be able to help.
I think I hoped there would be shock and tearful reaction, that then she’d offer practical help and sensible advice.
That maybe she’d say why don’t you come and stay for a few days and we’ll talk it through, you and me and your dad.
Like a family, like a proper family.
I don’t know why I thought these things, I don’t know why I thought anything would be any different suddenly.
Perhaps I thought that exceptional circumstances could change the way of things.