Page 46 of A Face in the Crowd
I feel her body relaxing and, when I let her go, Karen lets out a little grin.
‘I’ve never liked fireworks,’ she says.
‘I used to.’
‘They always stole my thunder,’ she says. ‘No one seemed bothered about my birthday because they all had fireworks displays to go to.’
‘Shall we both agree that Bonfire Night and fireworks in general are rubbish?’
‘Definitely.’
I take a step backwards and it feels as if things have changed. There was an innocent reason for all this suspicion – so perhaps that’s true of everything else?
The sense of well-being lasts for about a minute until I remember I’m holding onto Melanie’s jacket.
‘What about you?’ Karen says.
‘What about me?’
‘It feels like there’s something on your mind. If you want to share…?’
She’s read me better than I thought. There definitely has been something on my mind – more than one thing. I could unload everything on her now and see what she thinks. Tell her about the money and the music from across the hall. About Melanie stumbling back into my life and her jacket. About being fired and the man outside our building, who also happened to be at the memorial service. About Harry and how he was attacked in the same way that Ben’s brother went to prison for.
Then I remember the poster from the lamp post – and the fact that somebody wants their money back.
It’s all or nothing and I choose nothing.
Or almost nothing.
‘I left my job,’ I say. ‘I didn’t want to do it any more.’
Karen stares at me for a second and then leans in, wrapping her arms around my back. ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she says.
I suppose I can add lying to the whole fired-for-stealing outcome.
‘Can I do anything to help?’ she asks.
I pat her back gently, wanting to be released. ‘I don’t think so,’ I say. ‘I think I’m going to have to sort it out by myself.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Karen keeps me chatting for a few minutes more, but we quickly run out of steam. I tease her a little more about being a ‘sex-person’ and then return to my own flat. I put Melanie’s red jacket on my counter and am hoping Billy will greet me something like his old self. His food bowl is full and he seems to be asleep. I cross and sit next to him, but, when I touch his ears, he still doesn’t open his eyes. His back is rising slowly, but that’s the only sign of movement.
‘Come on, Bill,’ I say.
He doesn’t acknowledge his name. His ears don’t even twitch.
‘Bill?’
I rub his ears and his eyelids give the merest flicker, though barely enough for him to see through.
That feeling of my stomach bottoming out is back again. It’s like I’m falling, that everything is zooming past me at such a speed that I cannot focus on anything.
I’ve not had to take Billy to the vet for two years – and, back then, it was one of the most stressful periods of my life. Not only did I spend weeks nursing him back to health with the medicines, but there was a constant worry every time I left the flat without him. If he was a person, I could have at least called him during the day to see how he was doing. As it was, I’d find myself pulling out small tufts of hair in the ladies’ bathroom, or biting my nails down even further than usual. I would pinch the webbing in between my thumb and forefinger for a reason I wasn’t sure of then and definitely am not now.
It took me four months to pay off the vet bills and that was with denying myself anything but noodles to eat six days a week. My treat on the other day was an out-of-date pack of Quorn sausages that had got stuck down the back of the fridges at work. Jonathan told me to take them and not tell anyone.
Not this time.
