Slade House (10 page)

“Me and about fifteen Erasmus exchange scholars. You guys
are
here for the Halloween party, right?”

“Definitely,” says Lance. “We're six psychic investigators.”

“So just to be clear,” says Angelica, “the university owns Slade House, this building, where you live?”

“Technically, the Erasmus Institute owns it, though a university groundsman mows the grounds on his shit-on mower. There's a sign round the front that—Christ, did I just say ‘shit-on mower'? I did, didn't I?” Kate Childs bends over with silent laughter, which vanishes as quickly as it came. “Sorry. What were we saying?”

“The sign,” says Axel. “The sign round the front.”

“ ‘Slade House, Erasmus Scholarship Centre, Sponsoring Cross-Cultural Understanding in Education Since 1982.' Walk past it every day. It's by the”—she jabs a finger over the roof of Slade House—“big gates. So if
that
's all settled…” Kate Childs points to the big house. “Eat, drink, be merry: tomorrow we…” She waves her hand to shake out the last verb, but gives up and offers Lance her spliff.

Lance turns to us. “I'll see
you
guys later.”

“I'll lodge a formal apology on ParaSoc's records,” says Axel, as he, Angelica, Fern, Todd and me approach the house. “My uncle swore that Slade House had never been found.” Axel slaps the stone wall of the building. “Either he's a liar or he's delusional. Who cares? My first error was to believe him.”

I feel bad for Axel. “He's your uncle. You shouldn't feel guilty just for believing him.”

“Sal's right,” says Todd. “No harm's been done.”

Axel ignores us. “My second error was a failure to reconnoiter the locale. A short stroll down Cranbury Avenue would have done the job. It was unforgivable.” Axel's near tears. “Cavalier. Amateurish.”

“Who cares?” says Fern. “Looks like a slinky humdinger of a party.”

Axel adjusts his scarf. “I care. ParaSoc is suspended until further notice. Good night.” With that, he walks down the passage around the side of Slade House.

“Axel,” Angelica rushes after him, “hold your horses…”

Todd watches them disappear. “Poor guy.”

“Poor Angelica,” says Fern, which I don't understand; I thought Fern hated her. “Well, when in Rome…” She trots up the steps and slips inside. Todd turns to me and makes a
What a night!
face. I make a
Tell me about it!
face. He readjusts his glasses. If I were his girlfriend I'd make him get frameless ones to let his doomed-poet good looks shine. “Todd, you wanted to ask me something.”

Todd looks all hunted. “Did I?”

“Earlier. On the street. Before Lance found the alley.”

Todd scratches his neck. “Did I? I…” I deflate. Todd's pretending to have forgotten because he's got cold feet. It's all these waif-thin girls gyrating their skinny bodies around. “Maybe if we go inside and chat, Sal,” Todd's saying, “it'll come back to me. I—I mean, if you've got no other plans tonight. A quick drink and a chat. No strings attached.”

“Just the one sister,” I tell Todd a second time, louder, because “Caught by the Fuzz” by Supergrass is pumping on the stereo. We're huddled in a corner by an oven with a noisy fan. The kitchen's crammed, misty with cigarette smoke and smells of bins. Todd's drinking a Tiger beer from a bottle and I'm drinking shit red wine from a plastic cup.

“Your sister's older than you, I'm guessing,” says Todd.

“Was it a fifty-fifty guess, or can you really tell?”

“An eighty-twenty hunch. What's her name?”

“Freya. She lives in New York these days.”

Laughter explodes nearby; Todd cups his ear: “Wassat?”

“Freya. As in the kick-ass Norse goddess of…um…”

“Love, sex, beauty, fertility, gold, war and death.”

“That's the one,” I say. “As opposed to ‘Sally,' a doomed pit pony, or a tart in the East End docks in a Dickens novel.”

“Not true!” Todd actually looks hurt. “Sally's a sunny name. It's kind.”

“All the research suggests that Freyas go
way
farther in life than Sallys. Name me
one
famous Sally. Go on. You can't, can you? My sister won every medal going at school; picked up good Mandarin in Singapore, fluent French in Geneva; graduated in journalism from Imperial College this June; moved in with her boyfriend in Brooklyn, who is of course a hotshot Chinese American documentary maker; and got a job with a photo agency on Bleecker Street. Not an internship, an actual paid job. All within a fortnight of touching down at JFK. That's
so
Freya. If I sound jealous, I am. God, Todd, did you spike my wine with truth serum?”

“No, but don't stop, Sal. I love hearing you talk.”

I actually heard him perfectly well but I love hearing Todd using the words “I,” “love” and “you” in such close procimity so I ask him, “Say that again?”

“I said, I love hearing you talk. Maybe Freya's jealous of you, too.”

“As if! Here's
my
potted biography, to prove the point: Sally Timms, born Canterbury in 1979.” Todd's paying close attention, like he really wants to hear this. “Dad was a Shell Oil man and Mum was a Shell Oil wife. They still are—Shell's like Hotel California: You can check out but you can never leave. Dad got promoted to the Singapore office when I was eight, and we all moved out. Singapore's all rules, every square yard's hemmed in. When I was twelve, I had a, kind of…breakdown, and…” I hesitate, wondering if Todd's admiring my honesty or thinking,
Headcase, headcase, pull back, pull back;
but his beautiful brown eyes encourage me to carry on. “My parents decided I wasn't culturally adaptable, so I ended up at a girls' school in Great Malvern, in Worcestershire. Six years of English weather; of crap English food; lots of Singaporean girls, ironically; lots of rich people's problem daughters, too. Like me.”
But slimmer, prettier and bitchier.
“I should've fitted right in, but I…Actually, I loathed it.”

Todd asks, “Did your parents know you were so unhappy?”

I shrug. “It was a matter of making my bed and lying in it. Dad got promoted to Brunei, Mum stayed in Singapore, Freya left for Sydney—this was all pre-email, of course, so we all had to…to build our own lives, pretty much independently. We reconvened for summers and Christmases, but while Mum and Freya were like long-lost sisters, I was the…well, I'd like to say ‘black sheep of the family,' but black sheep are kind of cool. Todd, I can't be
lieve
you want to listen to me whinge on.”

“You're not whinging. You had a tough time.”

I sip my shit wine. “Not compared to an AIDS orphan or any North Korean or a Shell Oil wife's maid. I forget my good luck.”

“Who doesn't?” says Todd, and I'm about to say, “You don't, I bet,” but then this black guy with hair dyed white opens the oven door next to us: “ 'Scuse us, 'scuse us, boys 'n' girls.” He slides out a tray of garlic bread and offers us a slice: “G'arn, g'arn—ya know ya want to.” I don't know if it's a real London accent or a Cockney piss-take, but the garlic bread smells authentically gorgeous. I hesitate. Todd says, “I will if you will.”

“Mum's blind,” Todd tells me when we're on our third slice.

Actually I'm on my fourth, but I stop chewing. “Todd.”

“Hey, it's no big deal. People live with worse.”

“It's not
not
a big deal. Is that why you live at home?”

“Uh-huh. I got accepted at Edinburgh, and Mum and Dad were all, ‘Go on, son, it's your life,' but Dad's not getting any younger, I'm an only child, so I stayed. I don't regret it. I've got my own granny flat above the garage, all mod cons, for”—Todd realizes that if he says “girlfriends” it'll look like he's hitting on me—“for, uh…”

“Personal space and independent living?” I offer, wiping a dribble of butter off my chin as sophisticatedly as possible.

“Personal space and independent living. Can I use that?”

I dare to say, “Only with me.” I try not to ogle as Todd grins and licks garlic butter off his fingers. “If it's not too personal, Todd, can I ask if your mum was born blind or if it came on in later life?”

“Later life. She was diagnosed when I was eleven. Retinitis pigmentosa, or RP to its friends. She went from about 90 percent vision to less than 10 percent in a year. Not the best of times. These days she can tell if it's night or day, and that's about it. But we're still lucky. Sometimes RP ushers in deafness and chronic fatigue as well, but Mum can hear me swear from a mile away. She works, too, transcribing audiobooks into Braille. She did that Crispin Hershey novel
Desiccated Embryos
.”

I say, “Cool,” but don't add that I thought the book was massively overrated. Todd's knee's almost touching mine. If I were drunker, or Fern, or Freya, I'd put my hand on it and tell Todd, “Kiss me, you idiot, can't you see I want you to?” and I'd sound so classy. But if I tried it, I'd come over like a drunk podgy sad-sack slut—like a female Lance—and I can't, won't, mustn't, don't. “Cool.”

“You and Mum'd get on.” Todd stands up. “Really well.”

Was that an invitation? “I'd
love
that, Todd,” I say, inserting “I,” “love” and “Todd” into the same sentence. “God, I'd
love
to meet her.”

“Let's make it happen. Look, I'm going to track down the bathroom. Promise not to go anywhere?”

“I do. Most solemnly.” I watch him vanish among the bodies. Todd Cosgrove. A good name for a boyfriend. “Todd” is kind of classless while “Cosgrove” is borderline posh. Nice balance. “Sally Timms” sounds like a shat-upon events organizer, but “Sal Cosgrove” could be a rising star at the BBC, or an interior designer to the stars, or a legendary editor. Sal Cosgrove isn't fat, either. She'd never wolf down a family-size bag of Minstrels and make herself vomit it up in the toilet afterwards. True, I only properly started talking with Todd half an hour ago, but every instance of undying love was only half an hour young, once upon a time.

Behind me, Darth Vader's slagging off his sociology lecturer to a thin-as-a-rake Incredible Hulk, while in front of me the Grim Reaper's scythe slides to the floor as he, or she, flirts with a black angel with crumpled wings. I open my handbag and get out my Tiffany compact mirror—a “sorry” present from Freya for being too busy for me to stay with her in New York in August. The girl in the mirror fixes her lipstick. With Todd as my official boyfriend, I'll stick to my diet, I'll only eat fruit for breakfast, I'll only eat half my present portions. Mum and Freya's jaws will drop when they see me. God, that'll feel good! So now that's decided, I walk over to the food counter. Popcorn, more garlic bread and two Wedgwood cake stands piled high with brownies. One cake stand has a little flag stuck into the topmost brownie, saying
HASH BROWNIES
, while the flag on the other one reads
NO HASH BROWNIES
. Apart from a Snickers bar before my Chaucer seminar, plus the tube of Pringles I had at the library, I haven't eaten a thing since lunch. If we gloss over the garlic bread. Plus, I burned skads of calories walking to The Fox and Hounds. One tiny no-hash brownie won't hurt…

…Holy hell, my mouth actually froths, they're that delicious. Dark chocolate, hazelnuts, rum and raisins. I'm about to eat a second one when this tanned blond blue-eyed Action Man body in muscle-hugging black appears and asks in a twenty-four-carat Aussie accent, “Didn't we meet at the Morrissey gig?”

I would have remembered. “Wrong girl, I'm afraid.”

“Story of my life. But seriously, you've got a doppelgänger. I'm Mike—Melbourne Mike, as opposed to Margate Mike. Nice to meet you…Question Mark?”

We shake hands. “I'm Sal,” I say, “from Singapore, I suppose, if I'm from anywhere.” Singapore's more exotic than Malvern, as long as you've never actually lived there.

Melbourne Mike lifts a man-of-mystery eyebrow. “Singapore Sal. I think I drank three of those one night in a cocktail bar. All on your ownsome, Sal?”

Of all the guys who've hit on me and who haven't been drunk, which isn't actually all that many, Melbourne Mike's the best-looking by light-years. But I've got Todd, so I give Mike an apologetic smile. “ 'Fraid not.”

Melbourne Mike does a courtly bow
.
“Lucky bloke. Happy Halloween.” Off he goes, and screw you, Isolde Delahunty at Great Malvern Beacon School for Girls and your platoon of body-fascist Barbies who spent six years calling me “Oink” like it was just a friendly nickname and saying, “Oink oink, Oink!” when you passed me on the stairs or in the showers after hockey and I had to smile as if it were all just a funny joke but you
knew
it wasn't, you knew it was poison, so screw you Isolde Delahunty and screw all of you, wherever you are this evening, because I won, Oink just turned down a bronzed Australian surfer demigod, who now returns, still smiling, and points at the two cake stands of brownies: “By the way, Singapore Sal, some joker
may
have switched those signs over.”

I stop chewing. “But that's really dangerous.”

“Some people, eh? Proper turd nuggets.”

At the foot of the stairs, a possibly Indian girl in an all-silver Tin Man costume reads my mind: “Bathroom's this way, turn right, go along, it's there. Love the nail varnish, by the way. Peacock blue?” I get stuck between saying “Yes” and “Thanks” so it comes out “Yanks.” Embarrassed, I follow her directions to a TV room where a bunch of guys are sitting on sofas watching
The Exorcist,
but I'm not staying for this.
The Exorcist
was on at the party in Malvern where I lost my virginity to a temporary best friend's ex-boyfriend's friend called Piers. Not a memory I cherish. Isolde Delahunty told the whole school about Oink Oink's Big Night, of course, and publicized what Piers had said about me afterwards. Now I'm in a blue-lit corridor booming with Björk's “Hyperballad.” I pass a pair of tall doors and peer in. Thirty or so people are dancing in a big sort of ex-ballroom, lit by dim orange lamps. Some of the dancers are wearing stripped-down half-costumes, others are in only T-shirts or vests. I see Lance, sliding his hand over his own torso and neck. He tosses his dandruffy mane, spots me at the door and beckons me inside with a sex god's come-hither finger. I hurry off down the chilly corridor before I puke, round a corner, up some stairs and down some more until I find a bay window with a view of what might be the front of Slade House, with two big gateposts, though the streetlights and tree shadows and lines are blurred by mist and the fogged-up mullioned window, and to be honest I left my sense of direction in the kitchen. “Hyperballad” has turned into Massive Attack's “Safe from Harm.” Fern says my name. She's draped on a giant sofa in an alcove, French cigarette in one hand and a glass in the other, like she's doing a photo shoot. “Hello. Are you enjoying the party?”