Page 8 of None of This is True

‘Oh God, Josie, I’m sorry, I really am. But I’m busy pretty much the rest of the week, to be honest.’

She starts to leave again but Josie places a hand gently on her arm. ‘Please,’ she says. ‘It would really mean a lot to me.’

There is a sheen of tears across Josie’s eyes; she sounds desperate somehow, and Alix feels a chill pass through her. But she sighs softly and says, ‘I have a spare hour tomorrow afternoon. Maybe we could grab a quick coffee.’

Josie’s face drops. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I work afternoons.’

Alix feels a sense of relief that maybe she has swerved the commitment. But then Josie says, ‘Listen. I work at that alterations place, by Kilburn tube. Why don’t you come along tomorrow – we can chat then? It won’t take longer than a few minutes, I promise.’

‘What is it that you want to chat about?’

Josie bites her lip, as if considering sharing a secret. ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow,’ she replies. ‘And if you’ve got anything that needs altering, bring it along. I can give you a twenty per cent discount.’

She smiles, just once, and then she walks away.

6 p.m.

Josie works part-time: midday to five-thirty, four days a week. She’s worked at Stitch for nearly ten years, ever since it originally opened. It was her first-ever job, at the age of thirty-five. She’d always made clothes for the girls when they were little, and given that she left school at sixteen with virtually no exams and then spent the next ten years looking after her husband and raising children, she didn’t have many skills to draw on when she finally decided it was time for her to do something outside the house. She could have worked with children – in a school, maybe. But she’s not great with people and this job is not public-facing. She sits behind her sewing machine next to a huge sash window which overlooks the tube tracks and rattles in its frame every time a train goes past. She chats with the other women occasionally, but mainly she listens to Heart FM on her earphones. She spent the whole of today sewing large fake-fur beards on to printed images of a groom’s face on twenty stag night T-shirts. They were all off to Riga apparently. But usually it’s just hems and waistbands.

Walter is sitting at the dining table in the window when she gets home, staring at the laptop. He turns and hits her with a single smile when he hears her. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘How was work?’

‘Work was fine.’ She thinks about telling him about the fake-fur beards but decides that, really, it would lose in the telling.

‘How was your day?’ she replies, scooping the dog into her arms and kissing his head.

‘Quiet. Did some research into the Lake District.’

‘Oh, that’s nice. Find anything good?’

‘Not really. Everything seems so expensive. Feels like one big rip-off.’

‘Well, remember, I’ve had my windfall. We could probably stretch it a bit further this year.’

‘It’s not about whether we can afford it,’ he says. ‘Don’t like feeling ripped off.’

Josie nods and puts the dog back on the floor. Half the reason the dog is not a real Pomchi is that Walter refused to pay the going rate for a real Pomchi and was determined he could get a bargain. She’d just gone along with it.

‘What shall we have for dinner?’ she says. ‘There’s loads in the fridge. Some of those readymade meatballs. I could make a pasta?’

‘Yeah. That’d be great. Put some chilli in it. I fancy something spicy.’

Josie smiles. ‘I’m just going to get changed first,’ she says. ‘Then I’ll start.’

She walks past Erin’s room to get to hers. The door is shut as it always is. She can hear the squeak of the gaming chair in Erin’s room, the expensive one they bought her for her sixteenth birthday that’s held together with duct tape these days. Walter puts WD40 on the base every few months, but it still squeaks when she moves. Josie can hear the click of the buttons on the controller, and the muted sound effects leaking from Erin’s headphones. She thinks about knocking on Erin’s door, saying hi, but she can’t face it. She really can’t face it. The stench in there. The mess. She’ll check in on her tomorrow. Leave her to it for now. She touches the door with her fingertips and keeps walking. She acknowledges the guilt and lets it pass away like a cloud.

But as soon as the guilt about Erin passes, her concern about Roxy turns up; they always come in a pair. She picks up the photo of Erin and Roxy that sits on top of the chest of drawers in her bedroom, taken when they were about three and five. Fat cheeks, long eyelashes, cheeky smiles, colourful clothes.

Who would have guessed? she thinks to herself. Who would ever have guessed?

And then she thinks of Alix Summer’s children this morning in their Parkside Primary uniforms: the girl on a snazzy scooter, the boy scuffing his feet against the pavement, their smooth skin, and their hair that she knows without going anywhere near them will smell of clean pillowcases and children’s shampoo. Young children don’t exude smells. That happens later. The shock of scalpy hair, of acrid armpits, cheesy feet. And that’s just the beginning of it. She sighs at the thought of the sweet children she once had and resets the photo on the chest.

She changes and washes her hands, heads back to the kitchen, opens the fridge, takes the meatballs from the fridge, a can of chopped tomatoes and some dried herbs from the cupboard, chops an onion, watches Walter tapping at the buttons on his laptop in the window, sees a bus pass by, registers the faces of the passengers on board, thinks about Roxy, thinks about Erin, thinks about the way her life has turned out.

When the meatballs are simmering in their tomato sauce, she covers the pan and opens another cupboard. She pulls out six jars of baby food; they’re the bigger jars for 7 month + babies. They’re mainly meat and vegetable blends. But no peas. Erin will not countenance peas. Josie takes off the lids and microwaves them. When they’re warm, but not hot – Erin will not eat hot food – she stirs them through and places them on a tray with a teaspoon and a piece of kitchen roll. She takes a chocolate Aero mousse from the fridge and adds that to the tray; then she takes the tray to the hallway and leaves it outside Erin’s room. She doesn’t knock. Erin won’t hear. But at some point between Josie leaving the food and Josie going to bed tonight the baby-food jars will reappear empty outside Erin’s room.

Another bus passes by. It’s empty. Walter closes his laptop and gets to his feet. ‘I’ll take the dog out, before we eat?’

‘Oh! That’s OK, I can do that.’

---