Someday Find Me

Across the road and down a bit from Lucky Chips was a concrete square with a couple of bus stops around the edges and concrete blocks as benches in the middle and a big screen that showed the news to the pigeons and the crisps packets which were scuttling around and to the two people waiting at opposite stops where I’d never seen a bus stop ever. Up on the screen Fate Jones was having a little flick of her hair and the newsreader was telling us that it was three days now and she was still missing. I felt a bit shit actually, looking up at her and wondering what had happened to her. From what they were saying, her parents were proper nice folks, well off but into charity and all of that, nice little sister and a boyfriend who loved her. I stopped and watched for a bit, waiting for the jumpy buzz of my phone in my pocket. They were doing a video-link interview with a police bloke, who was still asking people who’d been around that night to come forward. She’d been at a pub quiz at her local, the same one she went to each week with the same group of mates, only this time round she’d left early, on her tod, because she was feeling a bit dodgy. Nobody had seen her since. It made you think about how it’d feel to be one of the mates, and whether or not you’d have been different and left with her and got her home okay, or whether you’d have just taken a chance because it was the same place you went every week and things that are the same feel safe.

My phone was buzzing in my pocket and it was time to chip off. I looked up at Fate Jones’s fluttery hair and I had a little secret thought, which said, Hope you’re all right, chick, and then I scarpered off to Alice’s.

It got to Friday, with the happy end-of-the-week feeling bursting out of both of us and we decided to have a couple of people round. We went through phases, me and Saffy, where sometimes we just wanted to live under a duvet for as many hours as we could stretch a weekend into, and sometimes we wanted to let everyone we loved into our little bubble, the more the merrier. So Alice and her bloke came round, and Saffy’s friend Delilah and my mate Eddie and his housemate Weird Brian, who wasn’t all that weird turns out but it was quite a catchy nickname so it had stuck. We were all standing around the kitchen even though there was the sofa and the chair and Quin’s duvet to sit on, because that’s always what happens at parties, it’s like there’s a magical magnet in a kitchen. Although it might be a bit to do with being closer to the booze, thinking about it. I’d set my decks up on the bit of the counter nearest the lounge – and furthest away from the sink and the drinks – and kept going over to have a little fiddle. Weird Brian was licking his lips and looking at Lilah’s boobs, which if I’m honest we all were a bit because sometimes you just can’t help it when you’re trying to talk about Top Idol or music or the weather and they’re just there all boobylicious. I flicked through some of the plastic wallets of songs I had stacked up and stopped listening to the conversation while I tried to remember what kind of music each person liked best.

Alice came over and started looking through my new records and bopping her head along to the music. She’d tied this spotty scarf round her hair and had big round red earrings in. She was looking really nice and Al always looked nicest when she was happy so I smiled a little smile to myself and gave her a squeeze with one arm. She grinned up at me.

‘How’s it going, love?’

I changed the song with my other hand and took the headphones off my neck. ‘Good, yeah, Al. Everything good with you?’

‘Oh, yeah.’ She winked over at her bloke and I tried for about the millionth time to remember what his name was. I’d met him loads of times and got on fine with him but his name was one of those things that never stuck in my head, which is a bit like a sieve as my mum used to tell me all the time. She looked back at me and it was like she was going to say something then changed her mind and took a sip of her beer instead. ‘Everything all right with Saffy?’ she said, as she swallowed.

I looked over at Saf. She had a big pretend daisy tucked behind her ear, and this floaty pink dress on with tiny flowers dancing about all over it. She looked gorgeous-fantastic and she was laughing at something Eddie had said. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Everything’s great.’

A bit later we were chomping on the big bag of crisps Al had brought round and talking about whether we’d rather be Richard or Judy. It turned out that on balance both had pros and cons and so it was quite a tough choice. Then there was that little break in the chat that you get sometimes when everyone’s just finished laughing and nobody says anything for a minute or two and you all kind of go aaah and look at your feet.

‘So,’ Weird Brian said after a bit, ‘what do we reckon’s going to happen with this Fate Jones thing?’

You see what I mean? He was a bit weird. Not really party chat, is it?

‘Horrible, it is,’ Al said. ‘I feel so bad for her parents.’

‘Rich though, aren’t they?’ Eddie said, like that was okay then, because Eddie was a bit like that, always thinking bad about people. ‘Must be something to it.’

‘Ransom, you mean?’ Saffy said, looking all thoughtful and clever like always.

‘Yeah, yeah, that’s the word,’ Eddie said, getting into it then. ‘I reckon someone’ll send them a note soon, you know, with all the letters cut out of newspapers and magazines and that. And if they pay up, they’ll get her back.’

We all thought about that.

‘It might be like that girl a few years ago, remember?’ Al’s bloke said. ‘You know, the one who was kept prisoner for years and years and fell in love with the bloke in the end?’

‘Stockholm syndrome,’ Weird Brian said, and I thought, I bet he watches all those true-crime programmes in the middle of the night, definitely his thing.

‘Nah,’ Lilah said. ‘Cos they’re always little girls, aren’t they, and then they don’t know any different. She’s grown-up. I reckon it’s just another normal horrible thing, some randomer off the street mugged her or whatever.’

Luckily she didn’t go into what ‘whatever’ meant because, fair enough, news and current affairs and that are party talk if you’re that way inclined but as far as I was concerned rape and murder aren’t all that suitable for a social atmosphere and I was feeling a bit shifty on my feet with the turn of events. I wanted to ask everyone whether they’d rather be Ant or Dec but now it seemed all inappropriate.

‘I mean,’ she said, ‘I don’t really get why it’s on the news all the time. It must happen, like, every day to loads of people. What’s the fuss?’

‘I’m telling you,’ Eddie said, even though he hadn’t, ‘it’s cos they’re posh and important and la-di-da!’

Lilah took another swig of her wine and nodded a bit too hard. ‘AND white.’

There’s not much you can say to that without falling into a big hole of awkward and so Al piped up and changed the subject a bit. ‘You seen those new billboards everywhere? The moving ones? Must have cost a mint.’

I went and turned up the music a bit and Lilah started dancing. The night turned back into little pockets of chat instead of one big circle, and Al started dancing too, a bottle of wine under one arm and her headscarf coming loose and falling in her eyes when she laughed.

I was halfway in the fridge getting beers out of the back and noticing how mouldy the cheese was when I heard her.

‘Dave,’ she said, which was Al’s bloke’s name and Saffy never had a problem remembering it, ‘got any bag?’

There was a bit of a pause and my breath puffed out all frosty.

‘No, mate,’ he said. ‘Meant to say – can we settle up tonight?’

‘Oh, shit, I forgot all about that! So sorry, hun – I get paid next Thursday, can I drop it round then for you?’ Her voice sounded all sweet and singsong, like little birds and bunnies might hop through the door any second and start pouring drinks and emptying ashtrays for her.

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘Thanks for reminding me – don’t let me forget again!’

With that she floated off to dance with Lilah and I came back out, bumping my head on the shelf on the way.

A while later I rolled a ciggie and went out to the front step. 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 was at it again, I knew she was. I tried not to look like I was looking at her, sitting there all bunched up in my massive woolly jumper with just her fingers poking out of the sleeves, pulling at the bit of toast I’d made her that just had a midget nibble out of one corner. But she saw me anyway and she got in a huff, jumping off the sofa with her legs unravelling and speeding off like Fred Flintstone’s – you know, when he’s pedalling along in his car or just running somewhere really fast and they go round in a little circle and make that twiddly noise. Quinton looked up from behind Brideshead Revisited, which was all he ever read, he had a million different copies and DVDs of it, and then looked down all hasty and fiddled with his parting.

It seemed like it had all changed just like that with no warning. There was no sign of lovely pottering Saf any more, there was just sulky-secrets Saf huffing about and pulling at bits of toast. There were dry old lines of coke all over the flat on CD cases, basically my whole last two years’ worth of album purchases: Gui Boratto and Bat for Lashes and LCD Soundsystem all sitting there sadly covered with craggy crumbs that had been forgotten about, and the night before I’d caught her about to rack up on a Brideshead DVD and it was a good job I did, Quin would’ve gone flippin’ spare if it’d been him that walked in. I sat there staring at a bag of apples, pink ones, her favourites, but you’d never have known it cos they were untouched, just sat there going brown and soggy, and pink apples didn’t come cheap, much more pricey than red or green ones and they didn’t taste any different to me but then I figured I was no expert. And that had got me a bit wound up because I didn’t like money being wasted. When I was in a better mood than then, I sometimes laughed at how we’d both spent too much of our lives thinking of pounds; at how Saffy had spent her past trying to lose pounds off her body and how I spent our present trying not to lose pounds on the tables. It’s not so funny now, when I think of what happened next.

There’s me looking at these pissing apples and wondering how to turn them and Saf back pink when Quin gets up off his sleeping bag and stands there tweaking at the creases on his trousers and smoothing down his blazer and his parting with his pudgy fingers.

‘Shall I have a word, Fitz?’ he goes, shuffling from one foot to the other.

‘Do what, mate?’ I said, still a bit distracted by the apples.

‘A word,’ he goes again. ‘You know, about eating.’

‘Oh, right, yeah,’ I said, tearing my eyes away from the bag. ‘I think so. You know best, Q, but she doesn’t seem right.’

‘Yeah,’ he goes. ‘Look, don’t worry about it. Sometimes she just forgets. When she’s stressed, you know.’

‘Okay, thanks, mate.’ I had a swig at my can of Coke and sat up a bit. ‘You off out tonight?’ I asked, because I really wanted to be nice to him all of a sudden because I couldn’t help thinking again that it was lucky we had him around.

‘Yep,’ he goes, big smile, ‘I’m off to this thing at Hector’s club – it’s champagne baths and a pool party. You’ve met Hector, haven’t you?’

I had met Hector as it goes, and it was hard to forget because the bloke was wearing tweed chaps when I’d made his acquaintance. Nice fella actually, bare arse aside. Well, Quin was off then on some spiel and he was rubbing his hands together and then holding them out wide and chortling away to himself, and I was glad I’d tuned out to be honest because who knows what he was describing the length of, you never could be sure with Quin – one minute he’d be telling you he was nipping down the shop for some of the special clove cigarettes he was always puffing, and the next he was on about a party he’d been to where they’d all snorted ket off the host’s cock. He was that kind of kid. It might seem strange that the sort of guy who plonked his tubby little bod in Bolly every weekend spent the rest of his time kipping on a My Little Pony duvet in our front room and looking out for Saffy, but underneath all his frilly shirts and dirty stories I was just properly learning that he had the biggest heart going.

So he toddled off out and I got up and had a quick look around for Saf, just in case she’d heard that little conversation cos that’d be the end of it if she thought we were talking about her. She was in the bathroom in the shower, and that wasn’t all that surprising cos that was where she always ended up, always in there buffing and scrubbing and rinsing until the cows came home. I even bought her a little shower radio for her birthday the year before, this little blue fish that suckered on there and warbled out tunes right next to your ear. It was like the best present she’d ever had, her eyes went all shiny and she stretched right up on tippytoes and gave me the biggest hug in the world. Shot myself in the foot there really, because there was no getting her out after that, songs tinkling out and pennies trickling away down the drain with the suds and the bubbles and the little grainy things from her scrubby stuff, which incidentally is not suitable for manly bits as I learnt the hard way. But at least it was only pennies not pounds trickling away cos she didn’t like her showers too hot like I did, she had them lukewarm so, you know, that was something I guess, if you liked to look for the bright side like I did.

She wouldn’t be out for ages so I wandered into the bedroom and had a bit of a half-arsed tidy-up, pulling the duvet up and picking up the glasses Saffy seemed to collect like a little magpie, and the big pot of salt that always wound up floating around out of place because she said that drinking saltwater was really good for you. I wandered back and stuck them in the sink and I was gonna wash them up but then there was no hot water cos Her Highness was still in the shower, so I just stood at the sink and looked up through the tiny jailhouse window at the top of the wall at all the feet and ankles trekking past. It was almost time for me to go to work and I was glad if I’m honest. Right about then the flat was feeling like it was shrinking, like I’d been looking at Saf’s mardy face and Quin’s side parting for too long and maybe the outside world had ended and there was nothing except us left in this flat and outside there was just people’s zombie legs wandering around, just stubs that ended at the knee marching around with bloody chips of bone sticking out the top and nowhere to go. I grabbed my work shirt off the radiator where it was steaming away happily next to a row of crispy socks and pants and shoved it on over my T-shirt and grabbed my bag off the side.

‘’Bye, Saf,’ I yelled, as I was opening the front door, and the bathroom door opened and she stuck her little blonde head out rubbing at it with a flannel.

‘Off to work,’ I said at normal volume. ‘See you later.’

‘Okay, lovepuff,’ she sang, and she blew me a kiss with her lovely pink lips. ‘Ooh, Fitz,’ she said, hurrying out after me.

‘Yes, babe,’ I said, turning back with one foot up the steps to the pavement. She was standing on the doorstep in her big beach towel hopping from one foot to the other on the cold concrete. ‘It’s Alice’s party tonight, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Have you forgotten?’

‘’Course not,’ I said. ‘I’ll come after work but you go ahead with Lilah if you want, hun, cos I might be a bit late if it’s busy.’