Ghosts in the Morning Page 4

  I jumped as the phone rang.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Andy, it’s me, how are you?’

  ‘Oh, hi, um, oh, Anita, hello.. I’m fine, yes. You, er, well, er, I haven’t heard from you for ages, how are you, I mean, well, you’re back then, you’re back from...from - ’

  ‘Yes, I’m back. Just yesterday. From India, dear, I’m back from India. Well, I spent some time in Nepal as well, but India was simply divine. I really think I’m going to have to go and live there, you know, I really think it’s my spiritual home. It’s got this...this aura, do you know what I mean, Andy? The karma of the place just keeps me in balance. Well, anyway, listen, Andy, are you free for lunch? Today? It would be great to catch up and I could bore you with all of my photos.’

  ‘Er, well, um – ’

  ‘Perfect. How about ‘The Cork and Top’, say, twelve o’clock? We can grab a sandwich, and maybe a cheeky glass of wine. Right, see you then.’

  So, lunch it was, Anita had decided. She always did.

  Anita was my oldest friend, indeed, she was one of the only friends I had. I had never managed to make many friends over the years that the boys were at school. It was difficult; I couldn’t relate to the young mothers, who were barely women themselves, pregnant at fifteen and all geared up for a life funded by the Bank of Mum and Dad or perhaps by benefits. And I struggled to bond with the yummy mummies – sure, I had the money, sort of, but perhaps I lacked the class or the grace that was supposed to go with it, and a lack of care for my body certainly whittled away at the “yummy” part. The thing was, I always felt that they could see past my expensive four-wheel drive car, through the veneer - that delicate gossamer blanket that Graham’s money afforded – right through to the shy, care-home girl beneath.

  Only Anita called me ‘Andy’, I wouldn’t have accepted it from anyone else. I met her in the care home that they put me in when I was thirteen. The Garter Home for Girls, named after its founder, Felicity Garter. There were photos of Miss Garter all over the walls of the home; she had a sour face and a cruel squint, but I guess looks couldn’t always be true because it seemed she set up the Home for altruistic reasons, so she can’t have been all bad.

  I remembered the first time I met Anita. ‘What’s your name?’ she had asked. I had barely put my suitcase down – a few meagre belongings, clothes that had seen better days – and she was standing at the door of my room. It was a very small room with a single bed and one cupboard. Shoeboxes we called them.

  ‘Andrea,’ I said. My voice sounded small, I was a bit overwhelmed, and Anita looked a little scary. She had a mop of unruly, dark hair, like she’d been in a strong breeze, and was twirling a lock of it, with her head cocked to one side.

  ‘An-dre-a, hmmm,’ she said, drawing out the syllables. Her voice was lilting, a hint of accent, Liverpool, perhaps, but I couldn’t be sure, I wasn’t very good at recognising foreign accents. ‘So, Andy for short. Well, Andy, I’m Anita. You can call me Anita.’

  ‘Er, it’s Andrea, not Andy,’ I said meekly.

  ‘Okay, Andy, whatever. Come on, I’ll show you round, meet some of the other girls.’ She grabbed my arm. ‘Ah, hi Frankie, this is the new girl, arrived today. Andy, meet Frankie.’

  ‘Hi Frankie,’ I said.

  ‘Welcome to hell, Andy,’ said Frankie.

  ‘Er no, Frankie, no. This is An-dre-a, not Andy, she doesn’t like to be called Andy.’ There was a hint of steel in Anita’s voice and Frankie cowed back a step.

  ‘Oh, okay, sorry, I mean, Andrea.’

  Later, Frankie told me her name was Francesca, but Anita insisted on calling her Frankie. She shortened all of the girls’ names, even those that couldn’t really be shortened. Elizabeth was ‘Lizzie’, Sandra was ‘Sandy’, Susan was ‘Susie’, and Clare strangely became ‘Clay’. Anita was a few years older than most of us, so nobody argued with her.

  ‘So why are you here, Andy?’ Anita asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean why are you here? Here, in the glorious Garter Home for Girls. Or, as Frankie so accurately put it, hell.’

  ‘Er, well, I, um, guess I, well, I...’

  ‘Come now, Andy, don’t be shy, we’re not gonna judge you, we’re all friends here. Well-’ Anita winked at me – ‘we’re all outcasts here, anyway. Now, look, what I mean is, some are here ‘cos they got no parents, or ‘cos their parents don’t want them. And some are here ‘cos they’re just plain naughty. So, which are you?’

  ‘Um, well my Mum died and – ’

  ‘And your old man?’

  ‘You mean, my Dad, no, he, er, well, I never really knew him, he left when I was young.’

  ‘Bastards, aren’t they. Men, that is. My old man was a bastard. Used to get drunk and beat me Mum up. And me, too. Went too far one day though, beat my Mum a bit too hard, put her in a coma. She never came out of it. They locked my old man up, he’s still inside. Hope he rots in prison, the bastard.’ Anita looked sad for a moment, then it was gone. She was too tough for tears.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and teach you how to play pool.’

  ***

  Anita looked radiant, overpowering and completely at odds with the surroundings. She was wearing a voluminous purple pantsuit, topped with a golden coloured sari. Somehow she still managed to look glamorous and attractive, rather than just ridiculous. Centred between her bright turquoise eyes was a bright red dot. In the gloom of the pub, I thought it was a spot, perhaps a mosquito bite, but as she grabbed me and hugged me towards her I saw it was a bindi.

  ‘Oh, Andy, it’s so great to see you.’

  ‘Yes, you too, Anita, you too. You look great, you look different, your hair, you’ve lost weight, you...’

  ‘Yes, of course I look different, dear, I’ve been away for over a year and a half. Healthy, harmonious living, dear, it does wonders for your body. But you look a bit fat, dear, hope you don’t mind me saying.’

  I shrugged. It didn’t matter if I did mind, Anita never pulled her punches. I liked that about her. And Anita did look well. She was always reinventing herself. A few years earlier it had been all about the fitness – spinning, aerobics, boxercise - and she’d gone all Jane Fonda, and now it seemed it was Bollywood.

  ‘So, tell me, Andy, how is married life?’ She turned to the barman. ‘Two glasses of Chardonnay, please. Yes, large ones. And have you got some menus for lunch, please?’ She looked back at me. ‘Of course, I presume you are still married, then? And Graham is still as dull as dishwater?’

  ‘He’s not that dull.’ She was right, Graham was dull, but I couldn’t help being defensive; if he were to be criticised, I would prefer it to be me who did it. ‘I know his job is dull, but that doesn’t mean he is.’

  ‘Okay, Andy, okay, keep your wig on. Now, what do you fancy? Shall we have a sandwich or shall we push the boat out and have a proper meal. Or, should I say, push your boat out – you don’t mind treating me, do you dear? Money’s a bit tight for a few days, I’m just waiting on one of David’s cheques to clear. The bastard has been slow paying me the last few months.’

  ‘David is still paying you?’ I said incredulously.

  ‘Of course, dear, of course he is. You know my motto – use them and abuse them. Or rather should I say “use them up and bleed them dry”.’

  Or just kill them. The phrase popped into my head like lightning and I had to bite my lip hard to stop it forming on my lips. Anita furrowed her brow. ‘You okay, dear, you’ve got a bit of blood on the corner of your mouth there.’

  ‘Er, yeah, just bit my lip, I’ve got a bit of an ulcer I think-’

  ‘Poor eating and stress, dear, that’s why you’re getting ulcers. Stress of being married to that boring git, I reckon. I don’t know why you never listen to me, dear, you should divorce Graham, take him to the cleaners, like I did with David, and get some excitement in your life.’

  ‘Anita, I do not want to divorce Graham, we’re married, we’ve got three sons, we
’re fine, I’m fine. ’ It didn’t sound convincing, even to me.

  David was Anita’s ex-husband. Well, her second ex-husband. Her first husband had been tossed aside when his grandiose plans for property development had proved to have no substance, in fact no property. Anita had obtained a quickie divorce and six months after that she had married David, a mildly famous, mildly rich television star; he was the main character in a long-running detective series, one of those soporific dramas that old people enjoyed, where there was never any blood and the killer was usually the mild-mannered postman, or vicar. David played the genial lead detective, a no-nonsense sensible chap, unburdened with the usual TV detective traits of alcoholism and broken families. I had only ever seen glimpses of the show, but David seemed to be a reasonably good actor, not that the script ever asked for any major dramatic stretch as far as I was aware.

  Anita had caught David in their bedroom with a fellow actress from the show. Anita was supposed to be away for the weekend, visiting an animal sanctuary in Devon, but she had missed the flight. David hadn’t spotted Anita at the doorway of the bedroom at first, mainly because he was facing the wall on all fours as the actress was busy inserting a large dildo into his bottom.

  Anita swore me to secrecy and said that David couldn’t risk the story going public – she had told me that he would be certain to lose his job, they couldn’t have that sort of scandal associated with that sort of show, and he wasn’t getting any younger, that show was his cash cow. If he lost that lucrative role, he would struggle to get another. But there was no way that Anita was going to stay with ‘that stupid pervert’ so an amicable divorce ensued and now Anita received a nice monthly cheque. ‘Hush money, bastard will keep paying it as well. He thinks I’ve got pictures on my mobile phone, but the truth is the crappy mobile that I had then didn’t even have a camera’.

  Anita smiled pitifully at me. ‘You’re not fine, dear. You’re overweight and underhappy, I can see that. And I don’t like to see my friends unhappy. So, I think maybe you can be my project now I’m back.’

  I snorted. ‘Anita, what do you mean, your project? I’m fine. Really.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Anita said, my words bouncing from her shoulders. She turned back to the menu. ‘Now, let’s see, should I give the veggy curry a go, ummm, no, maybe not a good idea, not after the ones I had in India, it’s bound to be a disappointment. Did you know, Andy dear, you can actually buy cookies filled with hash in India? Legally! It’s fantastic. I went camel-trekking in Rajasthan after having one of those cookies. You could buy them at a little shack at the edge of the desert, just before you got on your camel. There was a menu and everything, you could choose how potent a cookie you wanted. Of course, dear, I’ve dabbled on occasion before, as you well know, so I went for a superstrong one. And they weren’t exaggerating, I tell you, Andy, that was some experience. Those sand-dunes certainly look a bit different when you’re stoned off your tits.’

  I chuckled. ‘Aren’t you a bit old to be doing drugs?’

  Anita pulled a fake stern face. ‘How dare you, Andy? FYI, I was not “doing” drugs, I was merely indulging in the local culture. It’s not my fault that the local culture encouraged me to get doolally in the desert.’ She took a swig of wine and giggled. ‘Mind you, I probably shouldn’t have gone for superstrong. I nearly fell off the bloody camel twice, and when we hit a sandstorm, I got a bit paranoid and thought the world was ending. I ended up screaming and hugging my guide.’

  I laughed at the vision of an Indian guide being clutched tightly against Anita’s ample bosom, and we both sat for a moment enjoying a companionable silence. I had forgotten how much I had missed Anita. I pointed at her empty glass. ‘Another?’

  ‘Andy, dear, how long have you known me? Have you ever known me to refuse a glass of wine?’

  It was a wonder to me how Anita stayed so slim. She had always liked to drink, even back when we were in the care-home. I remembered the very first time I tried alcohol, I was with Anita and Francesca on a balmy afternoon.

  ‘Right, you two, it’s high time you were introduced to the joys of alcohol,’ Anita had said with a large smile across her face. ‘For girls like us, it is not simply a pleasure, but is, in fact, a necessity.’

  ‘What do you mean, girls like us?’ asked Francesca. We were sitting in the old shed at the bottom of the garden. The shed was hidden from the main buildings by some thick, gnarly trees and the staff of the Home didn’t usually bother wandering around this part of the garden. There was an underground stream running nearby, meaning the grass was always damp, and I guessed they didn’t want to ruin their cheap loafers. The shed itself was usually locked and the gardener, who only came in a couple of days a week, was the only one with a key. Well, the only one except Anita.

  ‘I mean us, the forgotten ones. Waifs, strays, the abused. We’re the ones with no parents, nobody gives a toss about us. We’re orphans. Like Oliver Twist.’

  ‘But you’ve still got a dad.’

  ‘My Dad is as good as dead, Andy. And you don’t even know who your old man is. As for Frankie, well...no, offence, Frankie.’

  ‘No, s’alright, I know what you mean,’ Frankie shrugged. Her parents had been killed in a car crash when she was five years old, and with no extended family she had been in care ever since. ‘Still, not all the girls are the same as us. Susie’s parents come and visit her sometimes, she’s only in here temporarily.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Frankie, temporary my fanny. There’s no way Susie’s parents are ever getting her back. You’ve seen the cigarette scars on the back of her legs, Social Services are wise to it now, she ain’t going home with those bastards ever. Look, no-one lives in this shithole by choice, and certainly not if they’ve got relatives who give a toss. I mean, it’s not a lot of fun being picked on by your mates at school just ‘cos you live here, is it? And when we’re not getting bullied at school, we’re here getting perved at by that lezzy Miss Wallen. Or, even worse, Mick.’

  Miss Wallen was the secretary of the care home, a frumpy, tweed-clad woman who smelt a little of cabbage. She had been at the home for years but not as long as Mick the caretaker. It was rumoured that he had been at the home since it was opened over thirty years earlier. He had a glass eye, but the other was bulging and all-seeing. He didn’t touch, as far as we knew at the time, but he certainly did look.

  Frankie frowned. ‘But you’re not at school, Anita.’

  ‘I’ve only just finished school, Frankie. Anyway, you get the point I’m making.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right about this place,’ I said. ‘And, don’t forget, the food is really shite as well.’

  Anita laughed. ‘Yes, Andy, it is, maybe that’s the worst part. And that is why –’ Anita drew her hand from deep within the back of the shed – ‘booze was invented. To take us away from all this.’

  ‘Are you sure we should...I’ve never... mean what if we get caught?’ Frankie looked worried. She was a frail, nervous girl, not as tough as most of the girls in the home. Anita was protective of Frankie, some sort of maternal instinct perhaps. Anita could be tough, but she wasn’t a bully, and she didn’t tolerate others being bullied.

  ‘Look, Frankie, you know those dreams you get sometimes, like the ones we all get. Okay, okay, I know they’re not all exactly the same, but none of us sleep too sound, do we? Sometimes, I wake up and find I’m hunched under the covers, sweating, convinced that my old man’s coming to beat me up. So vivid sometimes I can almost feel his knuckles on my cheek. You too, Andy, I know you’ve got some demons that visit you in the dark hours, I hear you scream out loud at night. No, no, Andy, there’s no need to look embarrassed, there’s no shame in it, it’s just one of those things that happens to girls like us. Anyway, the thing I’m trying to say is that booze helps with that, it helps put those dreams on hold for a while.’

  ‘But your old man used to drink, Anita, look what it can do to people.’

  ‘That wasn’t the drink, Frankie, that was just the fact
that my old man was a bastard, drink or no drink. Besides, it’s only bad for you if you drink too much every day. Yes, okay, you’ve got to be a bit careful, you don’t want to become an alcoholic, but now and again is okay. Everyone drinks a bit – I’ve even heard Miss Wallen likes a sherry or two. ’

  Frankie nodded. ‘Yeah, I heard Clare drinks whisky. And she does drugs sometimes. Lizzie told me.’

  Anita’s voice suddenly grew stern. ‘I don’t care what Clay does. And you should stay away from her, don’t be mixing with her, she’s trouble. I know we’ve all been through a few tough times but Clay is different. Got that dead look in her eyes, I’ve seen it before. Hardcore, so stay away from her, do you understand me?’

  ‘Okay,’ Frankie and I had chorused.

  Anita reached behind a box filled with rusty tools and pulled out a bottle of vodka. ‘Good. Now come on, let’s get pissed.’

  ***

  A muffled sound was coming from the lounge, it sounded like the television on low. I eased the door closed – I didn’t want to hear the sound of the slam, my head had begun to pound from the wine I’d had at lunch with Anita.

  I was angry too. There had been a comment as we had left the bar. There had been two young men, standing at the bar, they looked like rugby players, meaty hands clutching their pint glasses. They had looked at Anita and then at me and one had muttered ‘don’t fancy yours much, bit of a chunky one, be like shagging a bouncy castle’. They thought I hadn’t heard, but there was no fat in my ears. Before...well, before recent events, I would have done nothing, said nothing. Before, I would have left the pub quickly, would have been desperate to leave before the redness and the heat suffused my face, my body.

  Things were different now, somehow I was different. I turned and glared at them, and said ‘did you say something?’ and the one who’d made the comment – the tallest one – shook his head and suddenly found something interesting to stare at in his glass, he couldn’t meet my eyes, scared perhaps of the rage I was feeling.