‘No you don’t,’ she hisses, hunting for her bag and shrugging on her coat. It feels as though these actions take far longer than they should.
Finally, she is able to take the few paces to the hotel door.
‘By the way, you’re shit in bed,’ she says as she wrenches it open. ‘Merry Christmas, arsehole!’
She wants to slam the door behind her but it’s on one of those safety hinges and, instead, it gently closes with a disappointing sigh.
The word ‘Bitch’ is lobbed through before it shuts.
Outside on the street, she pulls her fake fur coat together at the throat. Fury pumps through her. She half thinks about going back and giving him a further piece of her mind.
But instead, she walks away, her high heels ringing out against a pavement that’s glossy with recent rain. She swallows down a surge of self-pity and blinks hard, trying to concentrate on which way to go.
Neve has a terrible sense of direction. Several boyfriends, and Lou, have claimed not to believe quite how poor it is, as if getting lost often is some sort of affectation. As if it is a choice, to experience the freefall sensation of panic when you don’t really know where the hell you’re going.
At the end of the street she stops and considers which way to turn.
There’s some sort of factory on the opposite corner and she’s sure now that they passed it. So she heads off that way, praying that she will find herself somewhere near Waterloo. If she can get over the water to the Embankment, she can probably find a night bus.
Her shoes chafe the backs of her heels and her teeth are gently chattering with the bitter cold. Whatsisface had a fashionable beard and it feels now as if a cheese grater has been taken to her chin. She’ll have to slather it with E45 when she gets home or she’ll look like she’s been sunburned. And Lou will be all over that in the morning.
It’s like being seventeen again, and not in any good way.
Neve takes another turning and begins to feel the usual thrum of worry that she’s going in the entirely wrong direction to where she wants to be. But she keeps moving and soon finds herself on a promisingly major road. Tall brown buildings soar on either side, glass-fronted windows lifeless, and a long row of bikes for hire seem to be resting like a tired herd.
Before long, she can see the distinctive glass sphere of the IMAX building by Waterloo and she lets out a breath of relief that curls in the frigid night air.
She’s grateful for the few other people around now, either party-goers draped in tinsel, laughing and shouting to each other, or London’s invisible army of workers dressed in cheap, sensible coats; heads down, hurrying from one service job to another.
Neve isn’t nervous about walking alone in London at night. It’s the sort of thing her parents would have fretted about but now … well, there’s only Lou and hopefully she’s asleep. She has only once been the victim of a crime, when her phone was stolen from her bag in a nightclub. The thief had clearly decided it wasn’t new enough to keep anyway, because it had been dropped in the beer and dirt and found by the doorman.
She hurries on, wondering whether Miri will find this a funny story tomorrow or give her friend the new look, the one that is just ever-so-slightly disapproving.
Neve tries to remember exactly where she can get the night bus to Kentish Town. Then, with a cold plop of realization in her stomach, she remembers taking her keys out of her bag that morning because a pen had leaked in the front pocket. She can picture them, still lying on the big kitchen table. Frantically, she begins feeling around inside her bag now, but knows by the lack of heft in the pocket that they’re not there. She closes her eyes for a moment and says, ‘Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit.’
Lou will have a field day with this. The whole house will get woken up.
She can hear her now, with her martyr face on: ‘It’s about time you took control of your life.’
Neve has been staying with her sister, brother-in-law and their two children since breaking up with Daniel, six weeks before. It feels so very much longer.
If she could go and sleep under her desk, she would, but she’d need a key for that too. It’s too cold to hang about, and anyway, it will probably take forever to get home. Maybe her sister will be up with the baby by then.
She hurries on towards Waterloo Bridge.
It’s surprisingly quiet. Apart from the occasional vehicle hissing past on the damp road, she has the bridge to herself. She stomps onward, ignoring the bright blue corona of the London Eye to her left and the comforting glowing face of Big Ben across the water. Normally she gets a thrill from these sights; loves the reassurance that she no longer lives in a tiny village near Leeds. But it’s too cold and too late for that.
Here, exposed on the bridge, the knifing wind feels mean and personal so she tries to tuck herself down into her coat, tortoise-like.
When she sees the figure ahead of her, she has the disorientating sensation that it is a hallucination, or even something ghostly. It’s partly because of the paleness of the woman’s skin and hair, combined with the clingy, bone-coloured dress. Maybe it’s the sheer incredulity she feels on registering that the woman wears no coat in the small hours of this December night.
The woman stands on the left, facing towards Blackfriars Bridge and the gold-lit Parliament, staring out over the water. She is very still.
Neve involuntarily shivers at the sight of the woman’s thin, bare arms, which hang by her sides. In one hand she carries a small, silver clutch bag.
As Neve approaches, the woman turns to her, with a hopeful look on her face. Neve feels the stab of embarrassment of the Londoner, despite the late hour and the strangeness of the encounter. She dips her head but can tell the woman is watching her. She turns, reluctantly, to face her again.
‘Look, are you okay?’ she says. Her voice sounds hoarse from the cigarettes she smoked with Whatsisface earlier. ‘Haven’t you got anything else to put on?’
The woman shakes her head in a quick, sharp movement and then smiles with something like sympathy. It’s almost as if Neve is the odd, vulnerable one rather than the other way around.
Make-up-less, apart from a slash of scarlet lipstick, the woman is startlingly beautiful, with wide pale eyes and a full mouth. Unlike Neve’s thick, dark blonde hair, the other woman’s is so pale it’s almost white. It is pinned at the sides and falls in silky waves around her thin, white shoulders. Her waxen skin is almost blue from the cold.
She’s clearly not poor, thinks Neve, eyeing her. The dress is made from some kind of ivory silk and clings fluidly to her slim frame. It’s almost unnatural, the way it hangs in a sweeping circle around her feet. A princess dress. The words float into Neve’s brain from some childish part of herself and she’s a little ashamed.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asks with a sigh. This one brief exchange means she now has a sense of responsibility to this woman. It’s why no one usually bothers in London.
She should know better. She delves into her handbag and pulls out her purse.
‘Look, I haven’t got much,’ she says, ‘but I can probably stand you a night bus. What happened to your coat?’
A particularly vicious gust of wind sweeps across the bridge, making both women take a step to the side. The bitter cold is ramping up Neve’s headache now and the other woman’s silence is starting to get on her nerves. Maybe she doesn’t speak English?
Neve has had enough and is about to walk away when the other woman finally speaks.
‘You’re