Her voice was growing louder and beginning to race, trying to outrun the tears that were creeping up at the end of her words.
‘Annie, Annie. Slow down, shhh.’
Her voice became clearer. ‘Charlie?’
There was a cadence to her voice that he recognised from their childhood; the unfailing faith she had in him to find the answer, to fix things when they went wrong. And why wouldn’t she have faith? Charlie had been the one who’d taken care of her when their mother hadn’t or couldn’t. It was he who’d balanced on a chair to cook eggs and beans while Annie played on the kitchen floor, knees grey with cigarette ash, nappy heavy with piss. And later, it had been Charlie who had stood between their mother and angry boyfriends, he who’d run things when she’d left them for days on end. When Annie’s periods had started, it was Charlie she’d asked for the money to buy her first box of Dr Whites. And now, he could hear in her voice, she needed him again.
‘Annie do you want me to come over?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Please, Charlie, will you come?’
Lying on the sofa, his eyes fixed on a smudge on the ceiling, Limpet seemed to have fallen into a trance. Charlie poked him on the arm.
‘Mate, don’t you think you ought to go back to bed? You look like shit.’
Limpet bolted upright, his eyes locked on his flatmate. ‘When’s the wedding then?’
‘Eleven. I’ll see you there, right?’
‘Yeah man, see you later.’
‘And Limpet?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Go back to bed, for fuck’s sake.’
The front door opened onto a tiny triangle of green. On a bench in the far corner a sparrow was hopping back and forth, but otherwise the street was empty. In the quiet of the early morning, West End Lane was spacious and peaceful, the windows of the red-brick flats above blanked by curtains as Charlie walked towards Kilburn. Annie and Ben lived above the High Road, down an alley beside the fishmongers and up a geriatric zigzag of rusting iron steps. From outside their front door, Charlie could see a clutch of lime trees peeking out from a garden on the street behind, their leaves sticky in the watery sunshine. He banged the door with the flat of his hand and Annie answered wearing a floral housecoat and clogs. To his relief, she was smiling, a wide grin that showed a dimple in her left cheek. Charlie pulled her into a hug and kissed the top of her head.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be having a crisis or something?’
She pulled away and laughed, a surprisingly low chuckle for someone so slight. ‘Look!’ she gestured inside to the kitchenette, her sleeve riding up to reveal a livid bruise on her wrist. She tugged at her cuff and Charlie looked away.
‘Ben,’ he said.
‘He came back!’ Annie exclaimed with a shrillness that made her brother’s jaw tighten.
A great coal-haired sprawl of a man, Ben dwarfed the chair he sat on, limbs splayed out in all directions.
‘Hi Chaz,’ he said, ‘bit early for a social call, isn’t it?’
Charlie glanced at the clock – it had just gone 8 – and grimaced. ‘Bit early for anything, mate.’
Annie held the kettle up, brow furrowed but her mouth set in a smile, her spare hand fluttering about her face.
‘Tea, dear boys?’ she asked. ‘Got a bit of a busy day ahead of us.’
Annie’s father had left before she was born, just as Charlie’s father had done. One morning when Charlie was four, their mother had leaned across the dirty breakfast table, scarlet dressing gown gaping open across her leaking breasts, and said to him, ‘You’re the man round here now.’ Eating his Weetabix, he had looked with intrigue at the baggy skin of the mewling creature she was holding and said nothing. From then on, though, he’d known this baby would be his responsibility; that he would need to protect her from the tidal waves of fury and despair and the many drunken boyfriends that passed through their mother’s life.
They had moved with their mother from place to place, the oniony smell of dirty linen and glasses ringed with whisky residue the only constant. And yet there had always been good days. Those were the days when their mother blazed with light, turning on her heel on the way to school and pulling them aboard the number 19 bus, climbing with them up the stairs to the seats at the front where they would see their friends below walking in the opposite direction. They knew better than to question her, for fear that they might lose this moment of brightness, her tinkling laugh. They would go to the zoo or to the cinema, where they’d watch as many showings in a row as they could, legs hooked over the plush of the seats in front. The problem was that there were always more bad days than good. The dark days, she had called them once when she’d tried to explain, ‘It’s as though all the colour’s drained out of the world, Charlie,’ she’d slurred from where she lay, ‘like it’s all made out of tracing paper.’ He had learned early on that she was lost to them on those tracing-paper days and so, whenever the darkness fell, he’d taken charge, looking after Annie as best as he knew how.
Charlie swigged his tea while Ben drummed his fingers on the side of his chair. Annie leaned back against the work surface, the tendons in her neck flicking, her hands still fluttering. Charlie noticed the stale odour of dirty clothes; the rumpled bed with a greying corner of the mattress exposed; the sink full of dishes smeared with ketchup and hardening grease. Annie clasped her fingers around her wrist as she spoke.
‘What happened there, anyway?’ Charlie asked, nodding towards her wrist, trying to keep his tone light.
Ben’s face darkened. He stood up. ‘Right. I need a piss. We’ve got to start getting ourselves scrubbed up, Chaz, so perhaps you could – y’know—?’
Charlie looked at his sister’s fiancé and gave a faint smile, though he felt his hands tighten into fists. ‘What’s that now, Ben?’
But Annie interrupted and changed the subject before he could answer, her eyes widening at Charlie as she spoke. For a moment he considered what would happen if he just spoke the words out loud. What are you doing to my sister? But her eyes were fixed on his and he could see what she was asking him to do, so he drained his cup, said goodbye and pulled the stiff door open. From the bottom of the steps he looked up to see his sister’s head peering over the railings, her pale hair streaming loose.
‘Don’t forget to be there at eleven!’ she shouted.
Raising his arm in a wave, Charlie walked out of the alleyway, swallowing the sudden urge to run back up the steps and take Annie away with him.
It was the morning of their wedding and fat green lime leaves were swaying by the window, a blue October sky behind them. Stella spoke in hurried whispers, though she could have been as loud as she wanted, since there was no one but John there to hear her. But her voice stayed soft as she pressed her hand against the glass and looked out, misting the pane with her words: This day is the beginning of a whole new life.
Outside, Kilburn had woken up. Cars and buses jostled along the High Road. Old women pushing baskets and young mothers pushing prams walked as if still asleep, their eyes cast down, unaware of the rumbling traffic or the loose stride of the young man side-stepping past them. And he in turn did not see them; the old and the baby-laden had no place yet in Charlie’s world. Guitar music spilled from Woolworth’s and he found himself stepping in time until the sound faded into the noise of the busy street. He looked up as he walked, passing under the striped awning of the butcher’s, the red and white swirl of a barber’s pole, a line of stone composers’ heads above the door of the music shop, their features softened with muck and time.