1966
‘You think my flat is perfect?’ Suze sounded surprised. ‘It’s not perfect at all.’
‘It’s all yours,’ I said. ‘It’s just me and my dad at home, but he’s… well, we stay out of each other’s way most of the time.’
‘Fair enough,’ Suze said, with a nod that suggested she knew what I was talking about. She sat down on the floor next to the bed.
Not wanting to discuss my father, I changed the subject.
‘So, I’m guessing you’re not supposed to live here,’ I said, sitting down next to Suze. The carpet was rough under my thighs, so I lifted them up and rested my arms on my knees.
Suze opened the tiny bag she wore and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. She offered one to me and I shook my head.
‘I knew some guys who lived here,’ she said with the cig clasped in her lips as she hunted in her bag for matches.
‘What sort of guys?’ I asked, though I knew what kind of men lived in squats in Soho. ‘Druggie guys?’
Suze lit her cigarette and smiled a vague smile at me.
‘Just guys,’ she said. ‘They moved on and I stayed. I got a friend to put the lock on the door.’
‘In case they came back?’
She shook her head.
‘I’m not like them any more,’ she said. ‘I just want to write.’
She took a huge drag on her cigarette and threw her head back so she could blow the smoke up at the ceiling.
‘What about you?’ she said.
‘What about me?’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘Write,’ I said.
‘And?’
I shrugged. Where to begin? It was easier to say what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to marry Billy and work in my dad’s shop.
‘I want to live on my own, in a flat, with a massive wardrobe full of gorgeous clothes, and a tiny kitchen,’ I said. ‘And I want a handsome boyfriend. George Harrison, perhaps.’
Suze fake shuddered.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Mick Jagger.’
‘Fine,’ I said, giggling. ‘We wouldn’t want to share.’
‘What else?’
‘I want to edit a magazine for young women like us,’ I said.
‘Oh wouldn’t that be peachy,’ said Suze. She knelt up to stub out her cigarette and smiled at me.
‘We could invent our own magazine,’ she said. ‘All about the things that interest us and girls like us.’
‘Fashion,’ I said. ‘And music.’
‘And careers,’ Suze said. ‘And books.’
‘Travel,’ I said, imagining getting on a plane to anywhere far, far away.
‘Men,’ said Suze. ‘Sex.’
I giggled again, quite shocked despite myself. Billy and I had only ever kissed – though he’d been eager to take things further. I’d told him I didn’t want to do it until we were married, but the truth was, I felt nothing when he kissed me and I really couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.
‘Do you write about sex for Home & Hearth?’ Suze asked, a cheeky glint in her eye.
‘Oh shit,’ I said, suddenly remembering Home & Hearth. ‘I have to go back to work.’
I looked at my watch. I was only a little bit late – hopefully Rosemary wouldn’t realise how long I’d been gone.
‘Do you want to meet up tomorrow?’ Suze said. She looked at me from under her eyelashes and I thought she was much less worldly-wise than she wanted me to believe.
Yes, all right,’ I said, surprised to realise I had enjoyed spending time with her. ‘Lunchtime?’
‘I’ll meet you outside the office,’ she said. ‘Thanks for today.’
I grinned at her as I stood up and brushed fluff from the carpet off my tights.
‘Pleasure,’ I said.
I thought about Suze a lot that afternoon. She wasn’t like anyone I’d met before. Some of my friends from school had a wild side, and even though I didn’t really like to drink too much – my dad had put me off booze for life – I enjoyed watching their show-offy, smoking-behind-the-bike-sheds antics. But they all came from nice families. Families with a mum and a dad and siblings, and tea on the table at six o’clock, and church at Christmas. Somehow I sensed that Suze came from a very different place.
The truth was, my own family was anything but nice. And when Mum died, things got worse. On the surface, we may have looked perfect – respectable, community-minded mum and dad, working hard running their own business and making it a success, clever older brother, quiet younger sister. But I knew the reality was very different.
Like I said, Dad had always liked a drink, and he’d always had a temper, but he really loved my mum. And when she got ill and then died, he struggled to hold it together. He put so much energy into seeming fine, that it was like there was none left for me. Mum’s friends queued up to bring us food, and to cover shifts in the shop, and everyone talked admiringly about how well Dad was coping. Dennis went off to university less than a year after Mum passed away, and I missed him like a lost limb. When it was just me and Dad at home, he mostly ignored me and spent his evenings drinking. Occasionally, he’d snap and shout at me. Increasingly – if I caught him at the wrong time or I’d done something he thought was wrong – he’d lash out. I’d become pretty good at hiding bruises with make-up and I had a routine now where I made sure the house was clean and Dad’s dinner was on a plate keeping warm in the oven when he got home. I’d say hello, then disappear to my room.
I planned to follow Dennis to university but Dad wouldn’t let me go. That was about the time Billy asked me to marry him – or at least when he started talking about when we’d get married as though it was a done deal – and I thought it might be the only way I could escape. And I’d also stepped up my efforts to get a job – and eventually had landed an interview at Home & Hearth.
I lied about where I worked, and I lied about my actual job, and I lied about how much I was paid. I cut my actual salary by a fair amount when I told Dad what I’d be bringing in, and offered to hand over nearly all of it each month as payment for my room and board. And the rest – the money Dad didn’t know about – I saved. I’d been at the magazine for a year now, and my savings account was beginning to look pretty good. I told myself I was saving for when Billy and I got married, but I knew that wasn’t true. It was my running away money. My independence money. It was my safety net.
So when it came to families, I knew how bad things could be. How frightening it was to know that when push came to shove, you had no one you could rely on. And I had stayed. I’d stayed with grieving, grumpy, volatile, violent Dad because it was better than going. I had no idea just how bad things had to have been for Suze to make her go. Because living with ‘some guys’ in a squat in Soho, stealing electricity and eating sympathy fruit from the market wasn’t easy. And for that to be better than the alternative, the alternative had to be really, really bad.
But despite all that, I knew the reason I was looking forward to seeing her again tomorrow wasn’t that I felt sorry for her. It was because I liked her.
My