Cesca barely noticed. She was too busy trying to push her way through the crowds while she mentally calculated how much money she had left. Over the years she’d learned how to eke out her wages to the last penny, coming up with experimental recipes that combined the strangest of ingredients. There was even a time when she was a skip-diver, running around with a gang of rich kids who thought it was subversive to eat a sandwich two days after its sell-by date. They’d been playing at being poor, finding the same exhilaration in living in a squat that most people got at the top of a roller coaster, holding their breaths before going down, down, down. But while for them it was a choice, for Cesca it had already become a way of life.
It was hard to pinpoint the exact moment she realised how far she’d fallen. By the time she looked around and discovered the hole she’d found herself in, it was already too late. She was too proud to ask for help, too afraid to admit to her family and friends what a state her life was in.
There was a big crowd of Japanese tourists trying to push their way into the Underground station, spilling out onto the pavement where the lobby wouldn’t hold them all. Cesca walked around them, shooting them an envious glance, knowing she couldn’t afford to take the Tube train home. The money in her purse wasn’t quite enough to pay this week’s rent, and it definitely wasn’t enough to stretch into next week. Luxuries like train journeys and dinner would have to wait until she found another job, or got her jobseeker’s allowance, or somehow managed to swallow her pride and ask for help.
The crowds thinned out as she crossed the Thames, heading towards the darker, dingier part of town where she shared a flat. The shops, so bright and full of pretty things north of the river, became less salubrious, offering overripe fruit and unwanted cuts of meat, the aroma wafting out into the smoky air. This was the part of London Cesca had come to know in the past few years, so far removed from her childhood in Hampstead, where her father still lived. Growing up in north London, the second youngest of four sisters, had been something of a fairy tale compared with the life she now lived.
Not that her childhood had been idyllic. Her mother’s death, when Cesca was eleven, had been enough to see to that.
The flat Cesca shared with another girl – Susie Latham – was on the top floor of a tall, crooked building. The red brick walls had long since turned black, coated with hundreds of years of soot and fumes, with patches eaten away by the wind and rain. The ground floor housed an old newspaper shop, the sort that sold cigarettes by the stick to children who weren’t anywhere near the legal age of eighteen years old. Stepping over the pile of empty soft-drink cans and screwed-up sweet wrappers, Cesca opened the door leading into the stair lobby, kicking the pile of unclaimed mail to the side. Like the rest of the building, the steps had seen better days, the carpet worn to shreds by years of trampling feet.
Susie was in the bathroom, using a set of tiny tweezers to apply false eyelashes with glue. She stuck them on strand by strand, cursing every time she dropped a tiny hair into the crusty blue sink. Hearing Cesca’s footfall in the hallway, she looked up, flashing a closed-mouth smile.
‘All right?’
Cesca nodded. She’d been living with Susie for almost half a year, yet they were still only on polite terms. That was the weird thing about life in London; a flatmate could be a virtual stranger, yet you could instantly click with somebody you met on the street. Cesca found the situation uncomfortable, enough to spend most of her time in the cramped bedroom she’d claimed as hers.
‘Dave rang this afternoon, he’s coming for the rent tomorrow.’ Susie glued the final lash to her right lid. ‘You’ve got the money this time, haven’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good, because it’s too bloody cold to be out on our arses.’ Susie tipped her head to the side, scrutinising her reflection. ‘Oh, and Jamie’s coming over tonight.’
‘I thought you two had broken up.’
‘He came crawling back, they always do. He’s taking me dancing first, then maybe for something to eat.’
‘Is his wife going?’ Cesca asked pointedly.
‘No she isn’t! Anyway, he’s explained all that, he’s planning on getting a divorce, but she’s making things difficult for him. She needs to get a bloody life.’
Cesca rolled her eyes. ‘What time will you be back?’ She walked into the kitchen and switched the kettle on. Pulling open the fridge, she looked inside, grabbing a small carton of milk that was languishing at the back of the shelf. Shaking it, she saw the telltale signs of yellow gunge sticking to the plastic sides. Black coffee it was, then.
‘Probably after midnight,’ Susie shouted from the bathroom. ‘Will you be up?’
It was funny how people asked the wrong questions all the time. Susie didn’t really want to know if Cesca would be awake – she wanted to know if she’d hide in her bedroom like she always did, letting Susie and her married-man-ofthe-week have some space.
‘I might go and visit my Uncle Hugh,’ Cesca called back. ‘He’s offered for me to stay over. So don’t wait up.’
Her godfather hadn’t offered anything of the sort, though Cesca knew he would in a heartbeat. Hugh was like a second father to her, and her confidant since her mother died.
‘Oh!’ Susie’s response held a whole range of emotions in a single syllable. ‘Well, enjoy yourself.’
That was that, then. Cesca was jobless, cashless and even the person she lived with couldn’t wait to see the back of her.
Was this rock bottom? She hoped so. If she sank any lower she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to climb back up.
2
Love is like a child that longs for everything it can come by
– The Two Gentlemen of Verona
‘Well I can’t say I’m surprised.’ Hugh walked into his living room, balancing a tray of cups, saucers and cakes. ‘It’s hard to picture you enjoying a job surrounded by cats. You never were one for animals. I can remember taking you and Kitty to the zoo one year, you both screamed whenever we went near the enclosures.’
‘That’s not true,?
? Cesca protested. ‘Kitty’s scared of everything, I’ll give you that. But I loved the zoo. I’ve got lots of good memories of you taking me there.’ She smiled at the mention of her youngest sister. ‘She said hi, by the way.’