Blast from the Past. Cathy Hopkins

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СКАЧАТЬ that night, I went to the downstairs loo. Mum must have been in there before she left because I could still smell her perfume, Chanel No 5, powdery and light. I realized that the scent would fade then disappear just as she just had. But what really got me was that in all the packing and last-minute panic, preparing for their new life abroad, Mum hadn’t bought any loo paper for the downstairs cloakroom and there wasn’t any. It was then that I realized I really was on my own: no one was going to take care of me any more, fill the cupboards, buy the necessaries. My mum was gone.

      I sat on the loo and sobbed my heart out.

      The next day felt strange too, getting up; no familiar smell of toast and coffee from the kitchen, Radio Four playing as Mum got everyone sorted for the day.

      The feelings didn’t last long. Yes, I was sad that they’d gone, but I also knew that I was liberated. No one to answer to, ask if I’d been to Mass, done my homework, tidied my room, got in late. No one to tell me I wore too much make-up, my skirts were too short, tops too revealing. No one to question my friends, my taste in music, how long I’d been on the phone. And, best of all, Marcia would be moving in.

      The family house was a four-storey, Edwardian build, with five bedrooms and a basement. The plan was to let the empty rooms to lodgers – students mainly. Marcia was one of them and we both had places at art college. It was summer in the city. Life was great.

      The two attic rooms up top were taken by Matthew and Juliet, who had decorated them with the kind of flock wallpaper you used to see in Indian restaurants. They’d chosen red and it looked cosy and exotic up there. There were three more rooms on the first floor, where Marcia and I lived along with a pale-looking sociology student with curly dark hair called Mark. Red-haired Ed, a physics student, was in what had been the front sitting room on the ground floor. Meanwhile the back sitting room became a communal place for us all, and we’d fashioned a make-do bedroom in the basement for Ron, who promoted local bands and had nowhere else to go. Despite having the physique of Desperate Dan, he seemed happy enough down there in the small space, and had pinned swathes of gold silk on the ceiling and walls, which hid the pipes and plumbing and billowed out, giving it the look of a harem. I loved going from attic to cellar, seeing how each character had made their space their own. As soon as Mum and Dad had gone and the tenants had moved in, the house had taken on a new atmosphere; a poster of Grace Jones appeared in the hall, another of Madonna in the sitting room. We ate what we liked when we liked, stayed up late, got up late. The house became a social centre for many friends who, like us, had little money to frequent bars or clubs and so loved to come and hang out. Phil Collins playing ‘One More Night’ was on a loop tape in the sitting room, and the house was always full of students or musicians, rolling joints, drinking tea, getting stoned and putting the world to rights.

      It was perfect, and I had Marcia to share it all with.

      *

      Marcia rolled the most elegant joints I’d ever smoked. Not those fat, loose ones with tobacco and hashish spilling out of the end that got covered in spit because no one could get their mouth around them. Hers were long and slim, like panatella cigars.

      On the low table in front of her in her room, she’d laid out her supplies: Rizla papers, king-size; silver cigarette case containing menthol, not regular tobacco; silver pill box with mother-of-pearl inlay containing her stash, and several immaculately cut pieces of white card for making roaches.

      She reached for her Zippo lighter and lit up.

      I smiled. ‘It’s like attending a Japanese tea ceremony, having a smoke with you.’

      ‘I like to do things properly,’ she said as she inhaled deeply. ‘Er … thing is, Bea, I’ve got some news.’

      She was always coming back with news for me, as I did for her. We were Marcia and Bea, Bea and Marcia. We did everything together, had done since we’d met that first day in secondary school. We shared all our discoveries: men, music, fashion, feminism, books, heroes or heroines to be admired or discounted as we pleased. We made all our decisions together; the most recent to decorate her room in the Zen style she’d got into. We’d painted her room white, took away the base of her bed and put the mattress on the floor, a bamboo blind at the window, a single poster in black and white depicting yin and yang in a circle on the wall, a small Buddha in the corner and books on Mahayana Buddhism piled up by her bed. I went for a more bohemian look. I liked the Pre-Raphaelites and we chose posters of Ophelia by Millais, Beatrice by Rossetti, Hylas and the Nymphs by Waterhouse for my walls. We bought vases and a chenille bedcover from an antique emporium in town, used embroidered silk shawls as throws on the sofa. Marcia said it had the look of a Victorian brothel. I was happy with that. I was the romantic back then; Marcia, ever the seeker, had just got into yoga and meditation, interests she tried to pass onto me but without much luck: I could never sit still for long enough. After years of friendship through school, it was great to be actually living together, and it was really thanks to her that I didn’t miss my family more in those early weeks after their departure. She more than made up for them.

      ‘It’s about Pete,’ she said as she handed me the joint. ‘He wants to take a year out to go travelling before university.’

      I took a drag. ‘Oh Marcia, I am sorry,’ I said. She’d just met him at Glastonbury back in June where he’d been manning a food stall, and I knew she liked him a lot because he’d been staying at the house every weekend for the last month.

      ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s me that’s sorry.’

      ‘Of course you are. Where does he want to go?’

      ‘All over. Cuba, Goa, Thai Land.’

      ‘Sounds wonderful. You must be gutted.’

      She looked away. ‘No, you don’t understand. I’m going with him.’

      ‘With him?’ My heart sank and my head swam as the marijuana took effect. ‘But you can’t. Your place at college—’

      ‘I’ve already spoken to them. It’s OK. I can start next year instead. Look, I am sorry, really I am, but it’s too good an opportunity to miss.’ What was she saying? She’d been making plans and not telling me? We told each other everything, everything: periods, moods, how far we’d gone with boyfriends and how they rated as lovers; everything. My heart sank further. This was the first time I’d ever been excluded. ‘And you’ll be OK here, you’ve got Matthew and Juliet. You’ll meet people.’

      I laughed. My brother and his girlfriend had even put in a mini-kitchen up on the top floor so they could be self-contained, away from the rest of us.

      ‘When?’ I asked.

      ‘In a week or so.’

      ‘Or so?’

      ‘On the twenty-eighth of August.’

      I felt sick. She couldn’t be going. We had everything worked out. The house. Parties. Barbecues. College. We’d bought secondhand bikes to travel in together. We were going to bunk off in the afternoon to see movies. Go shopping. Bake our own bread. It was all planned.

      ‘Come with us if you like,’ she added, though with little conviction.

      ‘I can’t. You know I can’t. Mum and Dad left both Matthew and me in charge here. I can’t abandon him. Anyway, I couldn’t come and be a tagalong with you and Pete – that would never feel right.’

      ‘They СКАЧАТЬ