Chapter 4: Rochelle
I stepped off the Eurostar into the most beautiful station I’d ever seen – Paris stations can be beautiful, but always in an old-fashioned way. St Pancras is so different, with lots of metal and glass as well as the older Victorian parts. It reminded me of a modern cathedral.
A friend in Paris told me that the champagne bar in the station is good, but it was early still, and anyway I’d promised myself I’d be a good girl for once. This was a fresh start for me, a chance to make a break from the Rochelle who ran herself ragged around Pigalle, always getting tangled up in new adventures in spite of her best intentions.
And in any case, Rachel’s friend Kyle was meeting me off the train. I didn’t really want that – I wasn’t a child, after all. But Rachel insisted. She kept telling me how easy it was to get lost and taken advantage of.
I saw someone waving at me and headed over. No doubt Rachel had shown Kyle my picture on Facebook, and in fact I thought I recognised him too – he was probably on her Friends list as well. I waved back, tentatively, and he strode over.
‘Rochelle?’ he hazarded, and when I nodded he reached out and we shook hands. ‘Welcome to London,’ he added, and as he spoke I noticed his eyes flicker up and down me – not in a wolfish manner, but perhaps with a flicker of amusement in their brown depths. Judging by his own conservative appearance – brown cord blazer over a navy V-neck, jeans – he probably didn’t know anybody quite like me.
Not that I’d made any special effort for this journey – as with just about everyone, it’s important for me to be comfortable when I’m travelling. But I do have my own unique style – a bit Gwen Stefani in the ‘It’s My Life’ video, a bit early Courtney Love … A mash-up of vintage pieces and costume jewellery with silk baby-doll dresses, fake fur, underwear as outerwear. Flapper-girl hair, cherry-red lips, spider lashes. I don’t do dressing-down. I stand out from the crowd. Maybe that’s why I’m so good at getting myself into trouble.
‘Thanks.’ I looked at Kyle expectantly, wondering exactly who he was to Rachel, that he would do her bidding like this – escorting a stranger across London.
He smiled. ‘Let me take your bags,’ he said. ‘You seem to have brought plenty of things.’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t travel light,’ I said, and I wondered why I had brought so much stuff with me. It’s not as if I was planning to party the way I did in Paris – quite the opposite. Although I wanted to explore London, part of me wanted a rest from the kind of lifestyle I had been leading in Pigalle. For anyone else, a couple of pairs of jeans and some sweaters would have sufficed. But I’d have felt lost without my disguises. For that, it occurred to me for the first time, is what they were. Even when I wasn’t dancing, I was playing a part.
Kyle led me out of the station, seemingly choosing the routes where there were the least people. Outside, he had us join the back of a queue for taxis.
‘This is on me,’ he said, and when I started to protest, he held up one hand. ‘There’s no finer introduction to London,’ he said. ‘Besides, it’s not very far.’
The line disappeared quickly and we climbed into a black cab.
***
Rachel lived in Bayswater; that much I already knew. Until this point, though, I’d never been to that part of London.
Her flat was on the top floor of a creamy white building with views over the treetops of Hyde Park. In direct contrast to mine, it turned out to be rather spartan, the only ‘decoration’ being some of Rachel’s own photos in dark-wood frames. Otherwise, there were a few pieces of utilitarian furniture and a kitchen with the basics but nothing more. Above her desk, a few shelves held some photography manuals and a few art books. I browsed the spines: Richard Billingham, Nana Goldin, Tierney Gearon. I took a few down and wasn’t surprised by what I found inside, given what I knew of Rachel’s own work: rather grim social realism, with occasional flashes of transcendence. Outsiders, the neglected, the marginal. A kind of subversive beauty found in squalor or deprivation or disarray.
Rachel and I were very different, that was clear. But it wasn’t a bad thing. I wanted a change of scene, and I had very definitely got myself one of those. This elegant tree-lined street leading up to the vast green space of Hyde Park couldn’t be more different from rue Chaptal in the Pigalle, while the flat – though not at all to my taste – brought welcome relief from all my baggage. Because that’s what much of it was, at my place – props, in both senses of the word. Artefacts to create an illusion of life, and things to shore me up. But shore me up against what?
I’d never really asked myself the question, but as I did I realised just how lonely I had been in Paris, despite all the people crowding in on me, crushing me.
***
Kyle sat with me for a while, as if he had picked up on my unease at being alone. That was the thing about me – externally, I was strong and outgoing, brash even. To many, I was loud and even obnoxious.
But of course it was a classic attention-seeking thing. Inside I was weak, and I needed other people to build me up into something coherent and ongoing. Leaving Paris was yet another attempt to get away from myself, but now that I’d fled, what was I going to do? What new me was to emerge? Or would the old one linger on, like a skin that I couldn’t quite shed?
Kyle seemed very nice, and from his conversation I suspected that he and Rachel had been together and that he was still smarting from the break-up. He was a musician, it seemed – a violinist in an orchestra – and while often he was away touring, at that time his schedule was relaxed. He said he’d take me round all the sights, and when I didn’t enthuse, he looked a bit hurt.
‘OK,’ I said, as brightly as I could manage. ‘But I need a few days to settle in. I – I need to think a few things through.’
Kyle frowned at me. ‘Are you OK?’ he said. ‘Are you homesick?’
I waved a hand airily. ‘It’s not that …’ I tailed off. ‘I mean – well, no, it’s not homesickness. It’s just … well, it’s just that I don’t really know what I’m doing here.’
‘But Rachel said it was you who suggested …’
‘I did. But I don’t really know why.’
Kyle smiled. ‘Impulsiveness,’ he said. ‘I like that.’ He studied his fine, long fingers. ‘It’s something I don’t have enough of.’
‘Oh?’ I cocked my head to one side.
‘In the orchestra my nickname is “Mr Unspontaneity”.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I have to weigh everything up from every angle before I can make a decision or commit to something. It’s like – it’s like a disease.’
I looked at him, intrigued. ‘I couldn’t be more different,’ I said, wondering what it was like to be so configured. ‘I guess at least you don’t get yourself into trouble that way.’
Now it was Kyle’s turn to look intrigued. ‘Trouble? What kind of trouble?’
‘Oh … you know.’ I shook my head, try to laugh it off. ‘Just stuff.’
He stared at me. ‘What do you do, in Paris?’ he said.
I hesitated. ‘Didn’t Rachel tell you?’
He shook his head.
‘I’m an exotic dancer,’ I said.
He stared harder. ‘A … An exotic … You mean a stripper?’ he managed at last.
I shrugged. ‘There’s a lot more to it than that.’
‘But you – you take your clothes off for men.’
I nodded. ‘Mainly for men, yes.’