I nodded again. I was out of my depth and glad to follow Phin’s lead.
The moment was falling away from me; I could feel it. I could tell Phin was about to stand up and go indoors and that he wasn’t going to invite me to go in with him and that I would be left here on the bench staring at the back of the house with it all still blowing about inside me, all the wanting and the needing and the red raw desiring. And I knew that despite what had just happened, we’d go back to normal, back to the place of mutual polite reserve.
‘Let’s go out today,’ I said breathlessly. ‘Let’s do something.’
He turned to look at me. He said, ‘Have you got any money?’
‘No. But I can get some.’
‘I’ll get some too,’ he said. ‘I’ll meet you in the hall at ten.’
He stood then and he left. I watched him go, watched the shape of his spine under his T-shirt, the breadth of his shoulders, his big feet hitting the ground, the tragic hang of his beautiful head.
I found a handful of coins in the pockets of my father’s Barbour. I took two pounds from my mother’s purse. I combed my fringe and put on a jersey zip-up jacket that my mother had bought for me a few weeks before from a cheap shop on Oxford Street, which was about a hundred times nicer than anything I ever got bought from Harrods or Peter Jones.
Phin sat in his throne at the foot of the staircase with a paperback book in his hand. To this day, this is how I always picture Phin – except in my fantasies he lowers the book and he looks up at me and his eyes light up at the sight of me and he smiles. In reality he barely acknowledged my arrival.
He stood, slowly, then glanced around the house furtively. ‘Coast clear.’ He gestured for me to follow him through the front door.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked, chasing after him breathlessly.
I watched him raise his arm into a salute and move towards the kerb. A taxi pulled over and we got in.
I said, ‘I can’t afford to pay for taxis. I’ve only got two pounds fifty.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said coolly. He pulled a roll of ten-pound notes from his jacket pocket and cocked an eyebrow at me.
‘Jesus! Where did you get that from?’
‘My dad’s secret stash.’
‘Your dad has a secret stash?’
‘Yup. He thinks no one knows about it. But I know everything.’
‘Won’t he notice?’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe not. Either way there’s no way of proving who took it.’
The taxi dropped us on Kensington High Street. I looked up at the building in front of us: a long fa?ade, a dozen arched windows above, the words ‘KENSINGTON MARKET’ in chrome letters. I could hear music coming from the main entrance, something metallic, pounding, disturbing. I followed Phin inside and found myself in a terrifying rabbit warren of winding corridors, each home to multiple tiny shops, fronted by blank-faced men and women with rainbow hair, black rimmed eyes, ripped leather, white lips, shredded chiffon, fishnets, studs, platforms, nose piercings, face piercings, dog collars, quiffs, drapes, net petticoats, peroxide, pink gingham, PVC thigh-high boots, pixie boots, baseball jackets, sideburns, beehives, ballgowns, black lips, red lips, chewing gum, eating a bacon roll, drinking tea from a floral teacup with a black-painted pinkie fingernail held aloft, holding a ferret wearing a studded leather lead.
Each shop played its own music; thus the experience was of switching through channels on the radio as we walked. Phin touched things as we passed: a vintage baseball jacket, a silky bowling shirt with the word ‘Billy’ embroidered on the back, a rack of LPs, a studded leather belt.
I didn’t touch anything. I was terrified. Incense billowed from the next little shop we passed. A woman sitting outside on a stool with white hair and white skin looked up at me briefly with icy blue eyes and I clutched my heart.