I see you tomorrow?’ Josh asked formally.
She nodded, smiling at him.
‘Be ready early and wear warm clothes. We’ll be away until Sunday.’
A night, away with Josh.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Flying.’
He kissed her, his mouth very warm against hers.
‘Until tomorrow.’
Julia went slowly up the stairs. The flat was in darkness, but the blackness seemed full of stars.
Felix’s door was closed, and when Julia turned the light on in her bedroom she saw Mattie curled up under her bedclothes with her arm up over her face. Julia watched her, trying to imagine going to sleep herself. It seemed impossible, the surrender of what she felt now to wasteful unconsciousness. She turned off the light and went out, closing the door with a soft click behind her. She stood in the hallway, hesitating, wondering whether to perch in the kitchen or to go down and walk under the trees in the square. Then she heard Jessie, calling out to her.
Jessie was sitting up in bed. She had slept for a few hours, numbed by vodka, but now she was awake again, facing the empty time until daylight. Until recently she would have levered herself out of bed and shuffled up and down the room to ease the restlessness, but now she felt too heavy and too exhausted to get up. Insomnia was like a grub inside her, gnawing, exposing her tiredness. This was the time when her memories assailed her, so vividly that it was hard to distinguish between what was real and what was remembered.
‘Julia?’ she begged. ‘Is that you? Come in here to me, will you?’
Or was it Felix, a little boy pattering in the night, or Desmond, creeping in from she didn’t know where …
Julia slipped into the room. Of course it was Julia. Back from her night out. She brought the old scent of cigarettes and closed rooms and perfume with her, and Jessie felt the past stirring like a massive body in the bed beside her.
‘Can’t you sleep?’ Julia whispered. She saw that Jessie’s face was grey, mottled with mauve, and her scalp showed through the strands of grey hair. In the daytime, with her face painted and her glass in her hand, Jessie was like a rock. It was a shock to see her so clearly at the night’s mercy. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
Jessie shook her head. ‘Just sit with me for a bit.’
Julia sat down on the edge of the bed. She felt the mattress dip sharply away from her, sagging under Jessie’s weight.
‘Well? How was it?’ Jessie demanded. That was more like her, and Julia’s anxiety ebbed a little.
‘I had a wonderful time,’ she said simply.
‘Dear God, I can see that. Tell us about it.’
Julia told her and Jessie listened, Julia’s talk interweaving with her own times, the fair-haired American boy with his ready smile and his man-like evasions all mixed up with a big black man who played the saxophone under a blue light and a boy from a long time ago who came knocking on a terrace-house door in Hoxton with a bunch of marigolds in his hand …
Jessie’s eyelids had dropped, but they opened again as soon as Julia leaned forward.
‘I thought you’d gone to sleep.’
‘No. Go on.
‘That’s all. Jessie, he’s going to take me flying tomorrow.’ Just like a little girl, promised a treat. The seaside, or a film show. Jessie looked at her face. Her mouth, and her eyes, belonged to a woman. But the way her arms wrapped round her chest, to keep the excitement in, that was what a child did. Jessie thought of the little woman in her brown coat and hat who had come to look for a child, and had found Julia.
‘D’you ever think about your ma?’ she demanded roughly. Julia stared at her, and then she said, ‘Yes, I think about her.’ In the silent, feverish weeks that had gone by since meeting Josh, Julia had tried to imagine her mother. Why had she made her a dirty little baby? Why hadn’t she wanted her? Perhaps she had been in trouble, not just that ordinary trouble. Or in some kind of danger, and so had given up her baby rather than let her inherit that. Perhaps she was someone special, nothing to do with the world of Fairmile Road. How much had it cost her, to give her daughter away to Betty and Vernon? Julia had let herself imagine a big house at the end of a curving avenue of trees. Even a face at one of the windows, a pale but exact replica of her own. She wondered if her mother was looking out, praying for a sight of the child she had lost.
‘I wonder about what she’s like. Why she had to give me away.’
‘I didn’t mean her,’ Jessie said.
Julia bent her head and picked at a loose thread in the bedcover. ‘My adopted mother?’
‘Of course. She counts as your mother, my girl, whatever other nonsense you’re letting yourself run away with.’
Julia flared back at her, ‘They’ve tried to turn me into someone else. Tried to turn me into themselves. A reflection of themselves. They didn’t want me. If they’d just loved what they got, it would have been different. Wouldn’t it?’
Jessie saw the hurt then. Julia had kept it to herself, but it was there. They had rejected each other, the mother and the daughter. No one’s fault, and everyone’s fault. She felt sorry for the little brown woman with her pulled-in mouth, and she felt a different sadness for Julia, who was just beginning everything.
The weight of Jessie’s memories heaved again beside her, pulling her down. She wanted to cry, for herself and Felix, and for the two silly, fresh, blank young women who had been washed up here with them.
The tears felt greasy under her eyelids, and then on her cheeks.
‘Jessie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’ Julia moved quickly, putting her arm round Jessie’s big, doughy shoulders, hugging her. ‘I’ve got you. I don’t need Betty or the other one. Don’t cry, do you hear? You’ve got us two, me and Mattie, as well as Felix. What else do you need?’
Jessie wiped her face with the corner of the sheet, an angry scrubbing movement. ‘Need? Nothing. Everything. Oh, don’t listen. I’m just an old windbag with indigestion and insomnia. And you can’t sleep because you’re too happy. Funny, isn’t it?’
They sat and looked at each other, and then suddenly they laughed. The daytime Jessie was there again.
‘Look at the time,’ she said sharply. ‘If you’re going flying with that boy tomorrow, and I’m glad I’m not, you’d better go to bed for a few hours first. Go on. Do what I tell you.’
Julia leaned over her first and kissed her cheek. Jessie’s skin was cold and dry. ‘Goodnight. Jessie …?’
‘What is it now?’
‘Thank you for letting Mattie and me, you know, do what we want.’
‘Go to the bad, you mean? That’s up to you. Nothing to do with me. Go on.’
Julia went, and Jessie lay back against her
