It was fine to smoke in the house and we did it all the time, but Lilah’s singing was getting a bit much and Weird Brian kept trying to talk to me about the girl who lived across the road from him, but mostly I went out because I thought Saffy was there because she’d disappeared. So I ducked out and found the front door open but out on the concrete no Saffy. I lit my cig and craned my neck to look up at the pavement to see where she’d gone. My heart did a little skippity-skip to the beat, but as my first drag was filling up the last pink bits of my lungs, I heard her tippytoe footsteps along the concrete and then she was at the top of the stairs like a miracle or a dream.
‘Hey, beautiful,’ she said, and her hair was all lit up from behind by the orange streetlight like an angel’s.
‘Hello, lovely,’ I said, and she skipped down the stairs and hopped off the last one to stand next to me. ‘Where you been?’
‘To get us a little something,’ she said, and she waved a baggy between her tiny fingers, catching the same orange light like it was glowing from inside or on fire.
I was about to ask her where she’d got it and how she’d paid for it and to tell her that everyone was going to make a move soon, but just as I looked down at her smiling face and opened my mouth, the door burst open and Weird Brian came strolling out, followed by Dave carrying Alice in his arms and then Lilah with her arm round Eddie’s neck.
‘Sorry, guys,’ Dave said, hitching up Al’s head where it was dangling over his elbow. ‘Ally was sick in your sink. Better get her home.’
‘No worries.’ We both nodded. ‘See you, guys.’
They bobbled off up the steps and their chit-chatter faded into the dark as they walked away.
‘Oh, well,’ Saf said. ‘More for me and you, baby.’
Her nails were painted dark dark inky-pen-blue and they drew beautiful patterns all over my arms and round my cheeks and down my neck. ‘I love you,’ she said, right into the middle of my ear, and the words swirled all round my brain and made everything inside me glowing and bright.
The next day while I was clinking all the empty bottles about in a binbag, I listened to the radio where everyone was still talking about Fate Jones. It had been longer than a week by then and all kinds of characters were sneaking out of the woodwork to talk about her and how sad it was. So far I’d heard from her primary-school teacher, the bloke who drove the bus she got to work, the old girl who lived three doors down from her mum and dad, and the busker who sang Beatles songs outside her university library. It wasn’t exactly stirring stuff. Simon Cowell had apparently said that all the Top Idol contestants would wear Fate Jones T-shirts on that night’s show. Which was nice. Even though it was really bad that she was gone, it kind of made you feel a bit warm in the heart, seeing how everybody wanted to help. Made you feel a bit happier about people, in a funny way, because even though there were baddies who might or mightn’t have done something to this blonde clever girl who volunteered at an animal shelter in her spare time and taught little kids ballet, there were a million other people in the world who were good and would look out for her. It somehow made the odds seem a bit fairer.
Once all the bottles were picked up, I put the bag outside the front door and wandered back in. I stood in the doorway to the lounge and looked about for a bit with my hands on my hips like I was about to do something important but I didn’t know what it was yet. The radio had started playing music again and it was a bit lonely without all the sad and worried voices chatting out of it, but it was quite dancy music so on the plus side it did make you feel like doing something. Saffy was out at uni in the library and I knew she would be for ages. She was really near the end of her course and so she had loads of work to do that she needed a lot of space for. And that’s what made me think.
I went over to the corner where the telly was, and I stood there for a bit with my hands on my hips again. I pulled the telly over to the middle of the wall and scuffed away the dented square on the dodgy carpet. I rolled Quin’s duvet up a bit and moved it more behind the sofa. I knew he’d understand, he was just that type of bloke. He hadn’t ever complained about having to kip on the floor or about people dancing around him half the time when he was trying to get an early night. He hadn’t been about that much of late and I knew Saffy was probably missing him. He’d been there for her through things I didn’t really understand, things she’d never told me about, about her illness and the place they’d sent her. For ages and ages it had seemed like it was nothing, just something she occasionally accidentally got close to mentioning and then speedily steered off in another direction so I figured it was just all in the past and didn’t matter any more. It had been Quin who sat me down once, when Saf was out at work, and said to me, ‘William,’ cos he always called me William, just him and my mum really, ‘I think you should probably know a bit about Saffy’s illness even though she probably won’t ever tell you,’ and I’d said okay, not sure what to expect, and he’d made me a cup of tea and explained how bad it had got when she was younger and about the place her parents had sent her and how that was why it was really important that we took care of her and kept her out of that dark space she’d been swallowed by before. And I’d nodded and agreed and we never mentioned to her that we’d had the little chat and after a few more months of everything being fine had passed I started forgetting myself because I knew Saffy couldn’t go back there now, not when she had me and this little flat of love and light to live in. Regardless, even though that was all in the past and we didn’t need to talk about it, having Quin around was important. I knew that and I made a note to myself to organise a night in, just the three of us, when Quin wasn’t out at one of his parties or on a date or logged on to Grindr.
I went into our bedroom and I got the little table that was folded up behind the wardrobe and took it back in with me. I set it up and put a folded-up bit of paper under the wobbly leg and gave the dusty top a brush with my sleeve. I’d had this mad idea to set up Saffy a little work station, so she could get all her stuff done properly. She always ended up spread across the floor and never being able to get comfortable and I thought she’d be made up to have her own space. I went back into our room and looked about for her easel, which I eventually found under the bed, which did strike me as a bit odd and I did have to think for quite a long while about when the last time I’d seen her use it was, but I shrugged it off and wandered back out with it and set that up too. Then I went back in to get her work, all the big piles of thick white paper and the sketch books and the giant black folder she carried them around in, which was bigger than her almost.
I didn’t mean to look. I was always good at letting Saf get on with things, cos I knew she’d show me when she was ready. I knew I wouldn’t like it if she sat listening to me when I was trying to put a mix together because I’d get all flustered and fiddle things about in the wrong way and it wouldn’t work. But as I was putting the papers all carefully on the desk, I couldn’t help sneaking a peek. No matter how much I got to know her, I never stopped being totally completely blown away by Saffy and how clever and talented she was without even trying. Seeing things she’d made or done made me feel like I was about to zoom through the roof and into upstairs’s flat with all the pride and amazement I felt. She’d been working on this project for ages and ages, spending whole weekends in the library and carting all kinds of things back and forth with her and going off into the little dazes she did when she was thinking of an idea and so I knew it was going to be good and meant a lot to her. So I peeked. Just one sheet at first, and then another. And then one more. And then I was looking through them all, through the sketchbooks and the big sheets and the little sheets, feeling confused and a bit like my feet were sinking very very slowly through the floor. There was nothing there. Some of them had sketches that had been scrubbed through with fat black pen, some had words and ideas on them that had been scratched out with a biro. Lots of them had half-started things in faint ghosty pencil, but you could tell they’d never get finished with real lines and colours. All the other pages were empty. There was nothing there.
She
