Tor can’t wait to get in the sea and puts a shout-out to the Sea-Gals mid week. It’s been a trying few days. Lotte has been embracing her time off with relish, in the way that only Lotte can. Because the hair salon is closed, she’s been home hairdressing and has embarked on an elaborate tattoo for their housemate, Declan, inconveniently setting up her make-shift studio in the kitchen. There’s been a constant stream of friends coming and going to the house, drinking and getting stoned in the garden. Tor has been trying to instigate the lockdown rules, but Lotte doesn’t seem to think that they apply to her. It annoys Tor that their house and their life seems to be so public. They’ve barely had five minutes alone together, but Lotte loves all the attention, holding court, always teetering on the edge of any gathering becoming a party.
It’s a relief to get in the sea and have a break from it all. The tide’s in and the water is a deep navy-blue in the winter sunshine, the sky a watercolourist’s blue. Tor kicks furiously, her gloves raking through the water as she gets her shoulders under, blowing out a shocked sigh as the cold hits. Her skin stings, like the sunburn she had when she first got to Africa. She’s glad of her woolly hat.
Dominica and Helga head off in the direction of the buoy, which is easily swimmable in the summer, but there’s a pull in the water, the tide going out, and it looks miles away. When Tor starts lagging behind, Helga comes to the same conclusion.
‘Let’s head that way,’ Helga says, nodding to the wooden groyne. As always, Tor is grateful to be in such a safe pair of hands. She knows it’ll be a relatively short swim. They only stay in a minute per degree of temperature, which Helga says is around eight today.
‘Oh, God, this is good. I can’t tell you how glad I am that Christmas is over,’ she says to Dominica. She means it.
‘I forgot to ask the other day. How was your family Zoom?’ Dominica asks.
‘Awful.’
‘Why?’
‘Because my sister, Alice, made such a big thing of it. She was even in heels. Who wears heels on Christmas Day?’
There’s a thrill to bitching about Alice tinged with a familiar guilt. They’ve been brought up to believe that their twin bond is sacred, but, often, it feels like that’s just a slogan. They might have shared a womb once, but that’s where the similarity ends.
‘We had to do this synchronised present opening. God, it was awful.’
In typical Alice style, she’d sent face cream and one glance at the back of the box had assured Tor that it was definitely not vegan. She remembers how Alice had told her to use it sparingly, as ‘the expensive stuff’ went such a long way. She told Tor to have a go at the wrinkle between her brow.
She does an impression of Alice peering at the screen, pointing out the Botoxed place on her own face that she finds objectionable on Tor’s, and Helga and Dominica laugh.
‘She’s so rude. And she doesn’t even realise it. I mean, we’re chalk and cheese. We always have been. But she always makes out that my appearance somehow reflects badly on her. It’s always about her.’ It’s not until she lets this out that she realises how much she needed to purge this resentment.
‘My sister was the same,’ Helga says.
‘Really?’ Tor asks.
‘Oh, she was a nightmare. She always looked down on me, even though I was the one winning sailing trophies. Didn’t matter a bit to her. She never acknowledged my success.’
‘I didn’t know you had a sister.’ Dominica sounds curious.
‘She died in a skiing accident when she was forty,’ Helga says. ‘My niece was only young. Mette. We’ve become close, but it would never have happened if my sister had lived because she was such a control freak. It didn’t help that she was married to an awful man. And I mean awful. I couldn’t stand the sight of him.’
‘I can’t stand my brother-in-law either,’ Tor says. It’s good to admit this out loud.
‘Oh. I love hearing about another arsehole,’ Helga says, flipping onto her back and nodding for Tor to proceed.
She explains how it had all started because Tor had told her parents and Alice and Graham about how she’d been helping out at the charity and her mother, with an earnestness that always gets right up Tor’s nose, announced that she thought it was ‘commendable’ that Tor was helping out ‘those poor people’. Tor had wanted to point out that the poor people would have been a lot better off if her simple wish had been listened to and they’d all sponsored her for her upcoming dawn charity swim instead of sending presents, as she’d requested.
And that’s when Graham had chipped in.
‘You say that, Rita, but I think half the people on the streets aren’t really homeless.’ He takes a big bite out of his cheese-laden cracker, but not before adding, ‘Just putting it out there.’
Still eating, he ploughs on. ‘They’ve got hostels to go to. That’s what I pay my council tax for.’ His cheeks are flushed from the champagne they’ve been drinking (apparently since breakfast) and now he takes a slug of port to wash down the cheese. He runs his tongue unpleasantly around his teeth. Tor happens to know that he cracked on to one of Alice’s bridesmaids the night before their wedding, so she’s never trusted him. She’s often wished that she’d had the guts to pipe up and tell Alice the truth, but confrontation is not her forte. However, something about the way Graham’s eyes glint now gives her the courage she needs.
‘That’s not really the same as a home though, is it, Graham? There’s rooflessness, I grant you. People who are sleeping rough, but there’s also homelessness. People who have a shelter, but it’s only temporary.’
‘It’s better than nothing.’
‘But only just. Don’t people deserve more? How would you feel if you had to stay in a hostel? Surrounded by strangers? With no home comforts? Told to get out and move on in the morning?’
Tor doesn’t point out that there are other, even more toxic forms of homelessness. Like the families she deals with who are living in insecure housing, where they’re trapped by payday loans and debts, living with the constant threat of that knock on the door that means they’ll be evicted. Or the youngsters she knows who are staying with family and friends, but they’re stuck sofa-surfing.
‘Yeah, well, those people don’t really help themselves, do they? I don’t rely on other people,’ Graham says.
‘They didn’t become homeless by choice, Graham. Mostly, there are many factors involved.’
‘Like what?’
He’s so fucking ignorant. ‘Well, lots of them got made redundant, or become unemployed in a place where there’s no hope of getting another job. And once they’ve lost their home, they don’t necessarily get access to welfare benefits, or have the education or language skills to help themselves get online. And that’s all before you factor in poor mental health, or people who have come out of prison, or people who have lost their partner or the person who looked after them.’
‘Well—’
‘Or people who split up and have to move out of their home and they can’t afford to rent somewhere else,’ she says, cutting him off. ‘Not to mention the people I meet all the time who’ve experienced horrific abuse. Would you stay in a house where someone was beating you up or raping you?’
‘I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the spongers.’
‘The spongers. I see.’ Tor wishes Alice and her parents could hear what a bigot he sounds.
‘The people who come over here—’
‘The refugees? Or the economic migrants? People who are fleeing persecution or war? Those spongers?’
‘You two,’ Alice interjects, and Tor sees that it’s time to bite her lip.
‘Yeah, well, there must be other solutions other than handouts. That’s all I’m saying,’ Graham concedes, but Tor is riled by the self-satisfied way he sits back in his chair.
‘If private landlords’ – Tor is aware of her flushed cheeks and shaky voice – ‘didn’t hike up the rents, then maybe there wouldn’t be such a housing crisis.’
Graham owns a whole load of commercial properties and flats. He shrugs, but his eyes are steely. ‘Let’s not go there, Victoria. I know it might come as a shock to you, with your “hippy-dippy, right-on Brighton” ways’ – he puts his fingers up to invert a phrase he’s made up himself – ‘but I’m not responsible for market forces.’
Dominica and Helga are listening as Tor recounts this word for word. They’ve turned and are heading back in.
‘Yep, he’s a prick,’ Helga announces. ‘Grade A. You’re right, Tor. Good for sticking up for yourself.’
‘And we’ll all do the swim with you,’ Dominica says. ‘It’s in March, right? Don’t worry. We can get some sponsorship money between us.’
Tor feels more reassured than she has done all day. She slows as they get to the shore. It’s too deep to put her feet down. She follows Dominica and Helga and together, they catch a wave as it barrels over onto the pebbles, depositing them into shallow water, like a mother coaxing a child forward.
‘Sorry to offload all of that,’ she says to Dominica as they walk up the beach. She notices her legs are bright orangey pink, but Dominica, in her light-blue swimming costume with dolphins on it, looks like a goddess.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ she says, smiling. ‘That’s what the sea’s for,’ and Tor wonders what she leaves behind when she comes out.