I’ve got a job at Mart’s house. It’s all falling into place. Perhaps my luck is changing at last. I have to clean the house (kitchen and bathroom, mainly) and the studio, and once I’ve got used to it I might help when people come to buy stuff. It’s only a few hours a week, but that’s not the point. He is so cool and amazing!!!!
Babysat Ellie on Wednesday night. It turned out I needn’t have, cos Simon was there, but Nina said she would still pay me as she’d promised. I didn’t tell her I’d much rather be sitting in her house in any case, never mind the money! We watched a crap Second World War movie that Simon wanted to see and I read Ellie’s story and we ate crisps and salsa dip that Nina left out. Nothing else happened. Simon was in a mood about something.
8 August
Today while I was cleaning the kitchen (his food cupboard is amazing; he has stuff I have never heard of, and the fridge is full of delicious things. I can help myself!). Matt asked me if he could do some sketches of me. It’s for his new project which is this stone figure, really big. I wasn’t a proper model or anything, he just wanted to do quick drawings while I got on with stuff like washing up and sweeping the floor. Next time he might do my head while I’m sitting down. He will pay extra because you have to pay a life model.
I don’t think he pays Nina though. There are drawings of her all round the studio. They are very good and lifelike. Mostly back views but you can tell it’s her. There are other ones which are hidden away, but I found them when I was having a snoop about when he was busy. She has let herself go! They won’t be much help for his sculpture, will they?
If he asks me to take my clothes off, what will I say?????
It is for art I suppose.
Nina has her hair tied up in all the drawings of her head and shoulders.
Nina is almost the same age as my mother! She is much older than Matt Davies.
Simon is still in a mood. In a funny way I am missing him. (What does this mean?)
Leah lifts her hair and twists it and holds it up behind her head. She rummages in a drawer for a hairclip. She turns to one side at the mirror, to admire the way it shows off her neck and shoulders. She can almost hear what Matt would say. Something about shape and line, the pool of shadow against bone.
It makes her look older. She leaves it pinned up.
She checks her stash of money saved from babysitting and the cleaning job. Almost enough for the new clothes. She’s seen this top in the window of a new shop at the top end of town. Black, with a real silk trim, and tiny buttons down the front. She imagines Mart’s fingers unbuttoning them one by one, the feel of silk slipping over her shoulders.
‘Leah?’
It’s Dad. They’ve hardly spoken for days.
She stands at the bedroom door looking down at him through the banisters, holding her breath.
‘I’ve got a place for your mother at the rehab unit at last. We can’t go on like this.’
Leah doesn’t even want to think about it.
‘So I need your help to pack up some of her things. Clothes, nighties, sponge bag, that sort of thing. Has she got a dressing gown?’
Leah shrugs. If he doesn’t know, why should she tell him?
‘By three this afternoon? OK?’
‘OK.’
‘I’ll come back from work, then, and drive her over. You can come too if you want.’
‘No.’
‘Sorry it’s like this. It’s hard for everyone.’
She stays there after he’s slammed out of the front door. Later she’ll go down and help her mother pack. She knows the routine. They’ve been through it all before. It hasn’t worked. But it’s a breathing space. You can’t go on doing nothing for ever. And maybe this time will be different.
Much later, when her father comes back from delivering her mother to the unit, Leah helps him pull back all the curtains, open the windows, let light flood back into the downstairs gloom. She strips the bed and bundles the sheets into the washing machine, vacuums the floor and carries all the empty glasses into the kitchen, stacking them in the sink.
When she goes upstairs her father is standing on the landing, pulling out piles of towels and sheets from the airing cupboard and removing bottle after bottle from the shelves where they’ve been hidden. He tips the contents down the bathroom sink and carries the empties outside in a cardboard box, dumps them next to the dustbin. It looks, Leah thinks, as if they’ve had a huge party. So many bottles! She manages to salvage one full bottle of gin before her father gets to it. It’s a shame to waste it. She and Simon can take it with them to the beach.
Dad’s on the phone to the person called Helen. He keeps saying the name, as if he likes the sound of it. Oh well. It seems more and more unreal to Leah, this life in a non-family. But that’s all right. She’s sixteen, she’s making a new life for herself now. She doesn’t need them any more.
She hears raised voices from over the road. She goes to the window to listen. It’s Nina telling Simon off. Something about some magazine?
‘I just don’t understand you!’ Nina shouts. ‘What is it all about? It’s disgusting! Killing for the sake of it. For pleasure. Barbaric! How can you even think about it?’
She can’t hear what Simon says in his defence, but she hears the door slam. Simon appears. He starts walking down the road.
Leah seizes her opportunity. ‘Simon!’ she calls out from the window. ‘Where are you going? Can I come?’
He hesitates, looks back at her, grim-faced.
Inspiration comes. ‘I’ve got a bottle of gin,’ she calls softly, just loud enough for him to hear. ‘Let’s go to the beach!’
She knows he can’t resist her, even if he wants to. ‘Meet you at the stile in ten minutes?’ she calls.
He nods curtly and walks on.
Leah unpins her hair, drags a comb through it quickly, puts on some lipgloss and sprays perfume on her wrists. She finds a carrier bag for the bottle of gin and takes a towel from the pile on the landing. She clatters downstairs into the kitchen.
‘I’m going out. See you later.’
Her father barely looks up. He’s reading the newspaper at the table. ‘Take your key,’ he says. ‘I’m off later too.’
His mind is clearly on other things. He doesn’t even ask her where she’s going, or what time she’ll be back. Still, what’s new?
It’s a relief to leave it all behind.
Simon is waiting at the stile. She smiles. He blushes. She knows he’s pleased to see her, even though he can’t tell her. She’d like to hold his hand and tell him everything about her awful family, but she won’t. She decided that a long time ago.