Bookselling didn’t start well for any of them. Stephen had got a dog so mad with his knocking it had flung itself straight through the screen door, ripping an Alsatian-sized hole in it and causing the owner to call the police. The dog’s legs had ended up caught in the mesh, so it couldn’t actually bite Stephen, thank God, but the wife had chased him off with a broomstick and two little kids on their bikes had laughed at him, which he’d found harder to take in a way.
But, inevitably, it was Sissy who proved to be the most out of her depth, undoubtedly not helped by the fact that they were currently staying in a flea-pit motel, using up all their money, still homeless. She’d obviously been crazy when she’d decided to do this – she thought now it must have been because Nigel had been heading off to Australia, and she’d been distraught at the prospect of the summer at home without him. It had felt like two losses to her – of both her university life and her boyfriend – and so stupidly she’d just followed Renée.
Although Sissy did her best to give at least the bookselling part a go (having absolutely failed to find somewhere to live), it had proved a disaster from the very beginning. Like every Tyler’s student, before actively trying to sell any books, she’d been trained to do some investigative work. She was meant to pick a house where it was fairly certain there were no kids: old-fashioned curtains in the windows, primly neat borders, that sort of thing. If she was lucky she’d find a lonely old lady who she’d be able to get talking, as long as she was charming enough – apparently the old dear would be glad of a nice English student to chat to (just start talking about the royal family, she was told, and you’ll have her eating out of your hand). The conversation was meant to go something like this:
‘Hi, my name’s Sissy and I’m on a summer educational programme here in Cleveland and I’ve come all the way from Bristol University in England. Great to meet you, Mrs –?’
‘Smith.’
‘Oh, great to meet you, Mrs Smith. You know, you may be interested to know that I’m Lady Di’s second cousin.’
‘Gosh, are you REALLY?’
‘No, no, I’m just joking, but I did see her at a polo game once, and gosh she’s pretty in real life.’ (Lots of laughing.) ‘You know, I’m just really looking forward to spending the summer getting to know everyone around here, it’s such an exciting programme for the local children. Now, those people next door (with basketball hoop over garage), they have kids, don’t they? Great, and they’re the –?’
‘Joneses.’
‘Ah, that’s right, the Joneses. And what age did you say the kids were? And the ten-year-old, that’s a boy, right? Oh, a girl, and what’s her name?’
And the patter was to continue for as long as Sissy could pump sweet, obliging old Mrs Smith for information, and then she was meant to say goodbye and duck into a quiet corner to draw herself a map of the street and detail everything she’d learned – who lived where, how many kids they had, what ages they were, their names, hobbies, etcetera – before she forgot.
Sissy paced up and down the suffocating street, her anxiety threatening to escalate into full-scale panic, until finally she decided on a house that seemed to fulfil the criteria: no basketball hoop, no toys in the front yard, grass with weeds in and slightly too long, the paint on the front door faded and dusty. She clenched her stomach – come on, she had to do this, she couldn’t travel all this way and not knock on a single door, that would be pathetic. Sissy hoisted her bag, which weighed a ton, further onto her shoulder and teetered up the path. She put down the bag, exactly where she’d been trained to: by the side of the front door, butted up to the house, initially invisible to the person who answered.
She rang the doorbell, but it made no noise and she wasn’t sure if it had worked. She stood back six feet, looking sideways down the street, and waited. The house seemed quiet, lonely. She rang the bell again. Just as she was about to give up, the door creaked open a little, and a shrivelled face poked through the crack. Separated as it was from its body, the face’s gender was unidentifiable.
‘Yes?’
‘Hi! My name is Sissy and I’m here all the way from Bristol University in England and I’m –’
‘Whaddaya selling?’ said the face.
‘Uh, um nothing,’ said Sissy, flustered now. ‘I was just wondering if there are children living next door?’
‘What are you, a paedo? Mind your own business. And if you ain’t selling nothing, what’s that bag doing there? Get outta here, or I’m calling the police.’ And with that he, or was it she, slammed the door.
Sissy stood frozen, horrified. Then, as her eyes started swimming, she scrabbled for her sunglasses, lugged her book bag onto her shoulder and started walking, fast, as fast as she could without actually running, cutting through residential street after street, oblivious to the heat now, clueless to where she was going, never looking up from the ground, never slowing, for at least half an hour. Finally she happened upon a deserted grassy park, where she sat down under the single spreading tree that seemed welcoming, almost as though it had been waiting for her, and she took out Volume One of Tyler’s handy educational book set and flicked through its pages until she found the history section, which although as a graduate in that subject told her nothing new, was at least something she could concentrate on; and when that inevitably got too much she lay down and wept, desperate for Nigel, who was somewhere up the Gold Coast, unaware of her misery, un-contactable.
In the absence of any better options that day, Sissy ended up staying under her tree, periodically shifting round with the sun to follow the shade, reading, weeping, sleeping, for hours and hours, until it was time to go home.