‘That’s the current Gap logo,’ he says. ‘They’ve only been using that logo for the past couple of years.’ He locks his gaze with Libby’s. ‘This sock is new.’
22
Lucy calls Michael at five o’clock on Friday afternoon from a payphone around the corner. He answers immediately. ‘I thought it might be you,’ he says, and she can hear the lascivious smile behind his voice.
‘How are you?’ she asks brightly.
‘Oh, I’m just great, and how are you?’
‘I’m just great too.’
‘Did you buy yourself a phone yet? This is a landline number, no?’
‘Someone I know is getting me one,’ she lies smoothly. ‘Something reconditioned. Should be getting it tomorrow.’
‘Good,’ says Michael, ‘good. And since I realise that this is not a social call, I guess you’ll want to know how I got on with your little request.’
She laughs lightly. ‘I would quite like to know,’ she says.
‘Well,’ he continues, ‘you are going to fucking love me, Lucy Lou, because I have got you the full monty. Passports for you, for Marco, your girl and even your dog. In fact, I paid so much for the passports that they threw the dog’s in for free!’
She feels the ever-present bile curdle her lunch. She doesn’t want to think about how much money Michael spent on the passports and how much he will want in return. She forces a laugh and says, ‘Oh! How kind of them!’
‘Kind, my ass,’ he says. And then he says, ‘So, wanna come over? Come and collect them?’
‘Sure!’ she says. ‘Sure. Not today. But maybe tomorrow, or Sunday?’
‘Come Sunday,’ he says. ‘Come for lunch. It’s Joy’s day off Sunday so we’ll have the place to ourselves.’
She feels the bile rise from her stomach to the base of her throat. ‘What time?’ she manages to ask breezily.
‘Let’s say one. I’ll put some steaks on the barbecue. You can make that thing you used to make, what was it? With the bread and tomatoes?’
‘Panzanella.’
‘That’s the one. God, you used to make that so well.’
‘Oh,’ she says, ‘thank you. I hope I’ve still got the magic touch.’
‘Yeah. Your magic touch. I really, really miss your magic touch.’
Lucy laughs. She says goodbye, she says she’ll see him on Sunday at 1 p.m. Then she puts down the phone, runs to the toilet and throws up.
23
CHELSEA, 1990
In the summer of 1990, when I had just turned thirteen, I came upon my mother one afternoon on the landing. She was placing piles of clean bedding in the airing cupboard. Once upon a time we’d had our laundry taken away once a week in a small van with gold lettering on the side and then returned to us a few days later in immaculate bales wrapped in ribbon or hanging from wooden hangers under plastic sheets.
‘What happened to the laundry service?’ I asked.
‘What laundry service?’
Her hair had grown long. She had not, as far as I was aware, had it cut in the two years since the other people had moved in with us. Birdie wore her hair long, and so did Sally. My mother had worn her hair in a bob. Now it was past her shoulder blades and parted in the middle. I wondered if she was trying to be like the other women, in the same way that I was trying to be like Phin.
‘Remember? That old man who came in the white van to collect our laundry, and he was so tiny you used to worry that he wouldn’t be able to carry it all?’