The Return of Rachel O'Dowd

First three opening chapters

There are three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a young woman.                                                                                                              Proverbs 30 18:19

 

Two small girls, different as you like, sit on a golden beach.  Both lost in thought, but their toes touch as they make patterns with their hands on the grainy, sugar paste sand.  A boy, close to being a man, walks over to them.  He is a bright, shiny thing and both girls instinctively reach out to him.  He smiles, then pauses, as though wondering which to choose.

***

                     

 

Chapter 1

In thirty-eight years of life, Rachel O’Dowd has visited two countries, Ireland and England.  In an era of cheap, globalised travel that’s pathetic in anyone’s language.  But she’s experienced other, cheap things.  She’d laugh if she wasn’t trying to quell her gag reflex. It’s her birthday today and she’s on her knees in a grubby laneway off O’Connell Street.  Europe’s widest boulevard has pockets of drug addicts and prostitutes that find themselves caught, like insect husks, in the Street’s outer strands.  Rachel’s a hand-on-hip kind of girl, and reckons it’s this attitude that still pulls the Johns.

She grips the money her client throws at her, while searching for the razor blades she hides in her pocket for protection.  She sits against the wet stone wall.  Looking at his retreating back.  The moisture seeps through her thin, working suit.  There’s wet in between the folds of fat on her back.  Rachel can feel a bout of retching coming on, either from the taste of his unwashed skin or the cheap vodka she fuels herself with; she’s not sure.

She wonders if her new pal is around?  He always has pills and is willing to share.  Lately he’s been banging onto her about finding her sister, getting out of here. But she can’t focus on that today.  Her head is full of sounds and images she can’t put in the right order.  She closes her eyes, but can’t unsee all the violence, can’t push away all the groping fingers and furry tongues.  Moderation holds no charm for me.  That was her catchphrase, at pubs and house parties, egged on by laughing revellers.  No one’s laughing now.  It would be so easy to bury the blade in her wrist.  She’d do it properly too, no cry for help from her.  A breeze blows down the laneway, lifting the ammonia smell and the hairs on the inside of her nose burn. 

Rachel fumbles with the neckline of her lace blouse, shoving her breasts back into her bra.  Her bitten nails snag on the cheap polyester material.  Her nose wrinkles, a smell somewhere between sour milk and fish wafts up from her armpits.  She stands up, straightens herself and decides to get a cup of coffee.  A birthday treat.  She laughs.  A sound like a broken weather vane whipping in the wind and makes for O’Connell Bridge.  She trudges up through D’Olier street, past the clock on the old Irish Times building.  Students brush by her, as they rush through the gates of Trinity college and still Rachel keeps going.  Up through the redbrick cobbled street and past Brown Thomas where she once had a job.  Making for Lad Lane.  It is her birthday, after all.  She stands outside the mews where she lived.  There’s a family there now.  The family he left her to go back to.

Rachel’s colder than a witch’s tit, but she tells herself there’s no warmth for her here.  She walks on and finds a bench.  Unfurling a copy of Finance Plus her pal gave her.  There’s Simone, her sister, on the cover.  Rachel feels her heart tighten as she looks at the picture.  Simone is standing at an angle with her arms crossed, her hair wrapped up off her face, the air of a titan about her.  And the tag line, ‘how the Irish diaspora have conquered British banking,’ makes Simone look even more powerful.  Rachel flicks to the article, her hands shaking.  Her eyes leak with tears as she looks at Simone sitting at a desk.  A glass wall behind her and what looks like London, at her feet.  Rachel rubs away the tears.  They’re a drunk’s tears and she can almost smell the alcohol from them. 

***

 

Rachel faces her reflection in the cashier’s window.  Her ginger hair flares out in a halo from the crosswinds inside the bus station.  She hands over the money her pal loaned her and looks at the new passport card he helped her get.

‘Bus to Dublin port will be here in ten minutes.  I’ll put you down the back, more room to spread out,’ says the cashier, with a look on her face that tells Rachel she’s putting her at the back of the bus for the sake of the other passengers.  A bus and a ferry, is all that stands between her and Simone.  Shivering in the bus station Rachel doesn’t know whether to sit or stand, so she waits.  Until 3.30pm.  When it begins.

***

 

Simone sits in her glass corned office with her back to her door, looking down on the financial district in London.  The pavements are slick with rain, the black top of the road glistens and grey suited people scurry in and out of office buildings.  Simone’s door opens and she swivels around, still ostensibly on her call, but her interest is elsewhere.  Her secretary has a look of mischief on his face.  He’s holding a ridiculous, oversized card in front of his body and she suspects there’s something behind it.  Three OH!  in pink glitter are stuck to the outside of the card.  It looks like he’s made it himself and she smothers down the giggle that bubbles up.

‘I’ll have to wrap up now. . .yes that’s right. . . fine. . .  send me over a proposal and if I’m interested I’ll get back to you next week.’

Simone hangs up and glances at her secretary who looks like he’s walking on a tight rope.

‘Dah dah. . .’  with a flourish, he pulls away the card, revealing a small cup cake.  Simone can smell the vanilla and sugar.  A pink candle sits in the swirl of butter icing.

‘Happy birthday, boss.’

***

 

Rachel takes a deep slug of her Smirnoff.  The high alcohol content burning and freezing her at the same time.  It tastes like dry ice.  She shakes her head, like a dog trying to get rid of a tick, but it doesn’t help.  She has no idea what part of London she’s in.  A grey pub with green, designer stubble ivy, looms on the side of a tiny roundabout.  She squints to make out the name, Lots Road.  Rachel knows that name.  A car swerves to avoid her.  The driver honks.  A long, jarring sound and he roars a jumble of words at her.  His purple face gives them meaning.  Rachel ignores him, staggering over to the pavement and leaning against a lamppost.  She must get to Simone’s apartment.  She closes her eyes, trying to push away the fear that’s biting at her. 

What is she going to say to Simone?  What, if after all this time, Simone closes the door on her?  She controls her thoughts, railroading her mind back on track.  She repeats Simone’s address from memory.

‘12A Lieutenant Square, Chelsea Harbour, London,’ says Rachel, as though it can ward off evil spirits.  She got GPS co-ordinates and street views before she set off from Dublin.  She pushes herself on and looks around at the refurbished architecture and contemporary skyscrapers.  Rachel feels as intimidated as the planners intended; nothing looks familiar.  She’s so tired.

What do I do now?

She pulls her ratty parka around her and shoves her hands under her armpits, as she stumbles forward in a half jog.  Lieutenant Square looms at the end of Lots Road.  Rachel stands outside the complex but can’t seem to find the will to decide.  Run?  Stay?  The massive gates of the complex open.  Rachel makes her choice.  The occupants of the outgoing car are looking straight ahead.  Their noses too far in the air to see her as she lurches through the gates.  She misjudges her entrance slightly, bumping off a solid railing and grunts with pain.  Out of habit she keeps her head down as she walks towards the main block.  Wanting to avoid the CCTV.  Rachel searches for Apartment 12A.  Can’t find it.  Panic rising like quicksilver.

The electric lights have come on and a resident, leaving the main building almost collides with Rachel.  He recoils.  For a moment, she thinks he might ring the police.  So she throws Simone’s name out, like a lucky charm.  His phone stalls in mid-air.  Rachel pulls out the address and waves it at him.  He looks at her outstretched hand.  She knows from the set of his face he’s not impressed, but he points to a block nearest the river.  ‘Straight ahead �" it’s over there.  Wait�'’

She runs.  As fast as she can.  Hoping he didn’t get a good look at her face.  Her mouth tastes like she’s been licking batteries.  She finds a tangle of shrubbery and sinks down into the centre.  Closing her eyes for a moment.  The cold wakes her.  It’s pitch black and a fox darts away from her, as though she disturbed it.  Rachel looks through the branches and sees a lean woman racing into the platinum light, the apartment block’s huge lamps throw out.  The woman swings around and Rachel crouches lower, recognising the haughty face; Simone.  She watches as Simone picks a door and punches numbers on the key pad outside.  A clicking sound and the door opens.  Rachel stumbles out of the bushes but misses the cement lip and falls forward.

*** 

 

Chapter 2

The clock on Simone Temperly’s night stand tells her it eleven am.  The duvet wraps itself around her body.  She soaks in the gentle brightness of the Autumn sun pushing into her apartment.  Her hand strays to the top of her lace panties.  A little tingle on her skin.  She was dreaming of Jon Deacon, picturing his hard thighs and strong hands.  On his first day in Formalon Deacon had reminded Simone she had a childhood crush on him.  Simone had looked mildly amused but told him she couldn’t remember him; a complete lie.  She can recall how jealous she felt at the end of her summer holidays in Sligo, when Rachel would get to stay behind with Jon Deacon and she had to go home.  Simone lies in her bed, laughing at her younger self, remembering how Deacon pitted them against each other and they fell for it.  Still, he has a baritone voice that promises the type of congress most women would leave their children for. 

Simone grabs her phone off the night stand and texts her boyfriend, Halim.  Might as well put to use the sexual tension of the dream.  She asks Halim if he wants to meet for a quickie?   He sends her a heart in reply.  With a grin, Simone gets up and showers.  Twisting her wet rope of ash blonde hair into a coil at the back of her head.  When it’s taken down her hair will be full of silky waves.  She pulls on a cut-out white running tee-shirt, it clings to her slim body, accentuating the curve of her full bust.  Her leggings are batman black, and she likes how they look, the logo in big white letters stops at her knee, whereas on other joggers its thigh high.  Simone laces up her runners and races out of her penthouse apartment in Lieutenant Square, preferring to run down the twelve stories, rather than take the lift. 

Out on the marina in Chelsea Harbour, she notes the admiring glances from pedestrians as she jogs past them onto Tadema Street, their heads on a swivel as a she races by.  It’s two point seven miles to Halim’s house in Phillimore Gardens.  She’ll do it in less than thirty minutes, with just enough pace to pump the blood to her skin, leaving her glowing.  Inviting.  She jogs through Gunter Grove, it’s a sleepy Sunday morning with crisp October sunshine and a clear blue sky.  The kind of day that’s a gift in London’s autumn, and the protected beech trees that line the street are like pops of rose gold.

London changes every square mile, and the three story Victorian houses on Warwick Road signal a different kind of owner to Simone’s part of town.  The houses are in flats, with rusting railings, patched up bay windows and wrapped in community.  Further along towards Kensington and nearer Holland Park, the streets change to well-kept mansions and green spaces that have a village feel.  33b Phillimore Gardens is such a place, she races up the coarse, granite steps and taps Halim’s buzzer.  She jogs on the spot, unplugging her earphones.  She can hear him pounding down the steps inside, he pulls open the door with a grunt.  Halim stands in the open doorway.  His belly button is falling over his waistband, looking down at his runners.  Halim Battier is tall, with dusky skin and hair that’s running away from his forehead.

‘Come here.’  His voice is hoarse and she feels her n*****s harden in response.  Halim makes to grab Simone, but she bounces out of his way with a laugh.

‘Are you trying to get me hard?’ he asks.

She smiles, delighted to see a small but perfect bulge in his active wear.

‘I might be.’

‘Well you’ve done that.’  He snorts.  A blast of air she can feel on her skin.  He takes her hand and pulls her into the hallway.

‘My little cat,’ he says, rubbing his thumb down the side of her face.  Dropping his hand down to scoop her breast.  Simone rubs his hairy tummy, feeling a surge of affectation for him.

‘We don’t do this enough,’ says Simone.

‘What?’

‘This - just being close - enjoying one another.  We’re always so focused on work, trying to fit everything in around meetings and client schedules.’  She blushes, hoping she hasn’t spoiled the moment.

‘That’s more you, Simone than me, but we’re here now.  Come on, let’s go upstairs.  Follow the leader.’

 She lets out her big, klaxon like laugh, a sound she knows Halim loves.

Halim’s apartment is warm and inviting, it has a citrus tang from orange blossom oil his mother sends him.  He undresses her slowly and she can see the appreciation in his face.  He pulls off his clothes and lies on the bed.  ‘All aboard,’ says Halim, his excited member standing to attention.  His grinning idiot face always makes Simone laugh.  She’s supple.  Hours of yoga a week give her muscles in hidden places and she knows how to please.  Her hips rotate in a chicane motion.  Halim bucks with excitement, but it’s over too fast for Simone.

She holds his damp, sweaty body and rocks him gently.  Hearing his soft snore, she wonders if she should stay, but pictures dashing into the office in the morning in her sweats and having to use the emergency suit she keeps in her locker.  She shudders.

Note to self, bring in change of clothes.

Simone slips out of Halim’s embrace and is already planning the next day’s work as she heads into Café Phillies for a light snack.  She texts Halim, asking him to join her but he doesn’t reply.

Lazy git is still asleep.

Simone loses herself in the Sunday papers, smiling when she reads Formalon’s profile in the Sunday Telegraph.  She is named as one of their key executives and pictures her mother’s face when she reads it.  On impulse, she rings her mother.

‘Hello love.’

‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Saw the picture of you in the paper.  One of the top female executives in British Banking! Your father nearly dropped his bacon sandwich.  I’m so proud, love.’

Simone shines inside.

‘Ah it’s not much, Mum.  And you know how papers exaggerate.’

‘I do not!  You work night and day in Formalon. Don’t know how you get time for a social life!  Lovely picture of you too, Simone.’

‘Thanks, Mum.’

‘What are you up to this afternoon?’

‘Might get a start on the week, I’ve a couple of reports to do.’

‘Ah love, a bit of balance?  Would you not go out to a dance?’

Simone laughs at her mother’s notions of London life.

‘I just might, someday, Mum.’

Simone hangs up and decides to jog towards Holland Park.  She pumps her legs.  The sprint already making her breathing heavy.  She scrambles through the Ilchester Place entrance, pelting through the chalky redbrick gates.  She does a circuit around the park closest to the tennis courts.  The grass is patchy but the ground is hard, exactly as Simone likes.  After two laps, she heads for the Tube.  On the ride home, she plays back a meeting from the previous week, wondering if she could have handled the firing differently.  She shakes herself. Annoyed that she is overthinking the situation and consoles herself with the settlement she authorised Formalon to pay out.  Jon Deacon pops into her head, once more, and she deliberately changes her thinking.

It’s getting darker when she gets off at Imperial Wharf.  The dropping temperature makes her run at full pelt down Harbour Road.  But it’s more than cold.  Simone feels uneasy.  As though something is watching her.  Street lights usually keep the London dusk at bay, but some of the bulbs are out on the road.  The industrial buildings take on a more ominous look.  A child’s fear of the night creeps over her.  She speeds up.  Running right into the ring of halogen light in her complex.  She releases her breath.  Blood pumps around her body.

She feels hot, but the night air is cold and licks her skin.  She jumps at a scrabble in the bushes, a fox looks right into her face before running off.  She laughs for being so skittish, but doesn’t loiter.  The feeling of being watched remains.

***

 

Chapter 3

Rachel takes large, staggering steps to regain her balance.  She stands at the door, trying to put her feet exactly where Simone’s were.  The occupant’s names are listed with apartment numbers beside them.  Simone’s looks to be at the top.

Eternity comes and goes.  Her finger pushes the bell.  Nothing happens.  Another push, gently, still no reply.  She closes her eyes.  Mumbling something to herself.  Then hears Simone’s voice from far away.

‘Hello?  Hello? Who’s buzzing the door?’

Rachel doesn’t answer.  She stands.  Mutely, trying to hear the younger sister she remembers in this cold, confident voice coming through the speaker.  

‘Hello?  Who’s there?  Put your face up towards the camera please?’ says Simone.

‘Simone?’  Rachel’s voice is dry.  Despite all the alcoholic lubrication she’s given it during the day.

‘Yes?  Who’s this?  I can hardly hear you.  Look up into the camera please.’  Simone’s accent is cut glass, and Rachel is too afraid to speak.  The wrongness of her decision to find Simone overwhelming her.  She stares up into the single eye and tries to say her name.  Her mouth opening and closing, fish like.

‘Who are you?’

She pushes out her name in a croak.  ‘It’s me, Simone.  Your sister . . . Rachel.’ 

Silence.

Then a buzzing sound.  Rachel throws herself in the door.  The mirrored foyer seems to run endlessly in every direction.  A fat, dirty woman stands in the centre, like a corpse flower in bloom.  She can’t find the lift doors in this reflective infinity until they open.  When they do, she flees into the comfort of the dark interior.

Simone’s in the hallway, waiting for her.  She stands toe to toe with Rachel.  Then smacks Rachel across the face.  Rachel reels.  Using the door frame to support herself, she tries to speak.  But her lips are numb and fumble with her words, dropping them aimlessly.

‘What are you saying?’ asks Simone.

Rachel can hear something unpleasant in Simone’s voice and she’s white faced.  Maybe it’s the tone or the accusatory look Rachel remembers so well. 

‘Screw you,’ says Rachel and takes a swing at Simone.  She misses.  Her knuckles graze off the solid doorframe.  She registers the frayed skin and the running stitch of blood, but feels no pain.

‘Screw me?  You’re the one who ran off and never contacted Mum or Dad.  Missing for fourteen years!  Who does that, Rachel?’

‘Your Mum and Dad, I never asked your parents to take me in.’  Rachel leans into Simone, eyeballing her.  But Simone’s image keeps zooming in and out.  ‘Stand still.’

‘Oh, didn’t you?  What do you call arriving on our doorstep when you were thirteen and homeless?  They’re the only mother and father you’ve known!’

This isn’t going how Rachel planned.  Simone looks like she might close the door in her face.

Rachel pitches forward and attempts to hug Simone, ‘do over?’

‘What?’ says Simone, taking a step back.  Staggering.  ‘Yes. . .what?  Look, just come in.  Are you alright?’

Rachel doesn’t know what to expect.  Tears?  Joy?  But Simone’s face is somewhere between horror and disbelief.  Rachel looks up at her.  Simone has no right to be beautiful, her nose is too long, eyes too close set; yet it works.  She stares at the tiny mole above Simone’s top lip, even her flaws are perfect.  Feeling filthy, Rachel tries to cover the smell from her breath by speaking through her hand.  It’s dirty and her hair feels crusty.  She had wanted to be clean meeting Simone, but the overnight journey and nodding off in the bushes has left her rancid.

Her gaze travels to the interior of Simone’s apartment, the open space, exposed brick, glass curtain wall and the surfaces that radiate do not touch.  Standing on the pristine floor she loses her nerve, and turns towards the door.  Run.

Simone blocks her.  ‘Rachel �" stay.  Please.’ 

The BBC news is on in the background, showing streams of numbers Rachel has no idea how to understand.  ‘It’s dark.  Please stay, at least until tomorrow?  Come on.’  Simone pulls her forward.  ‘Let’s get you something to eat.’

Simone’s tone is gentle, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.  Rachel shakes herself and asks for coffee.  If she’s going to pull this off she needs to sober up.

‘What happened to you, Rachel?  Where did you go?’ asks Simone, standing in her kitchen holding a shiny pod.  She puts it into a coffee machine and it makes a pock noise as the lever come downs.

Rachel snorts.  ‘You don’t want to know what happened to me,’ she says, wanting to put Simone on the back foot, lacing her voice with sarcasm.  ‘After all, I bet you spent years trying to find me.  Not.’

‘We did!’ 

Rachel is happy to see the hurt concern on Simone’s face.  She knows the Temperly’s had no chance of finding her.  They had no idea where she went.  Simone walks over to Rachel, putting both arms out to her and holds her in an awkward embrace.  Rachel doesn’t move.  The nearness of Simone feels alien.

‘You know, Mum is still lighting candles for your safe return every Friday after Mass in St Edmunds.  Tell me what happened after you left us, Rachel?’

Rachel shuffles out of Simone’s arms and starts to pull at a thread in her skirt.  Addressing her comments to the floor, she tells Simone a tale of wandering, of feeling left out, as if she were sleep walking for years.  Of being unable to find her way back and the unending quest for a bottle.  But there are many gaps and holes.  She sounds like she’s reading stereo instructions; her voice is so flat.

‘Where did you live in Dublin?’

Rachel rubs her eyes and looks at Simone, wondering where to start.  ‘It was good at first, I know I’m wrecked looking now, but a year on the streets will do that to anyone.’  Rachel barks out a laugh.  ‘Don’t be so shocked Simone, the only thing between you and me is eight hours of grooming.’

Simone shrugs.  She looks to Rachel like she’s trying to be cool, not shocked by Rachel’s comments; but she knows Simone is rattled.

‘Do you want the unvarnished truth?’

‘Yes please, Rachel.’

‘Truth is I enjoyed my life in Dublin,’ she puts up a hand to Simone,’ not all of it, but the first couple of years were great.  I worked on the MAC counter in Brown Thomas, then moved to Alan Paul, one of the most upmarket boutiques on Grafton street.  It was all going on in there!’  Rachel lets out a honking laugh.  ‘The men would come in with their wives, buy them expensive dresses and arrange dates with us.  I know,‘ says Rachel, nodding at the surprise she sees in Simone’s face. 

‘Sounds farfetched because it’s the tenties, but it happened.  Some men will always want sex outside marriage.  I can’t tell you how many divorces and remarriages happened through that boutique.  There were some focused girls in that shop, who didn’t mind turkey necks or aul lads so long as the wallet was big enough.  That’s where I met the Dublin It crowd, or that’s what they thought they were.  All sitting rooms and lines of coke, Dublin is about twenty years behind London.  Good sub culture though, but it’s a bit rough on the streets.  Too many bad lads with guns.’

‘Is that where you ended up?’

Rachel nods.  ‘Yes, but I hated working with the public.’  She makes a rasping noise she thinks passes for laughter.  Simone looks disturbed.

‘Why didn’t you get another job?’

‘I had a habit by then.  I could have probably got a job in Eason’s or HMV, but it wasn’t me.  I’ve always known I could have done better, or should have done better.  If I’d had the right support behind me.’

Rachel knows from Simone’s face that she’s trying to work out what she’s hinting at. 

‘Mum and I searched everywhere for you, put up hundreds of posters but I never thought you’d go to Dublin.  I suppose we should have checked, but how?  Do you think we didn’t support you enough?’

Rachel throws her eyes up to heaven, irritated at Simone’s whining tone and self-justification.  ‘That’s not what I’m talking about, Simone.  I remember seeing that article about you.  On the front cover of Finance Plus.  God I couldn’t believe it!  Betty Temperly’s daughter on the newsstands in Dublin.  And there was I. . . .hooking on side streets.  It felt like the world had gone crazy.  Upside down.’

Simone pulls back.  ‘You sound disappointed.’

‘Well, you could hardly expect me to be thrilled, Simone.  I was a down and out and you were Miss Hoity Toity in British banking.  I mean, I’m pleased you’ve done so well with the Hargreaves and all that, but if I’d had the support you got, imagine what I could have become?’

‘Is that why you came back?  You saw a picture of me in a magazine and thought I want some of that?’

Rachel moves around on her chair, like she’s sitting on a hot plate.  She’s not as sober as she thought and can’t seem to marshal her words to fend off Simone’s attack.

‘You got a sniff of my success and you got on the first plane?’  I mean, for all those years, why didn’t you contact us?  Why didn’t you let Mum know you were okay?’

‘I didn’t get on the first plane, Simone, because I couldn’t afford it.  I had a mate who loaned me a few quid for the boat.  And stop trying to bring Betty into this.’

Rachel knows why Simone is changing the subject; she wants to make Rachel feel guilty.  However, the thought of Betty Temperly praying in a damp church in Southampton for her safe return, does play on Rachel’s mind.  She pushes her lips in and out. 

‘I wanted to call you, to keep in contact.  But at one stage I was living rough, sleeping in the doorway of a jewellers on Dawson Street.  How could I have told your Mum and Dad that?’

Simone frowns, her speech slows as though she’s weighing her words.  ‘Rachel, was any of it. . .okay?  Bearable?’

‘I can’t give you a day by day account, Simone.  I was on the streets for the past year.  It’s not something you’d want to remember, but it didn’t start out like this.  There was a lad.  He was married, but he left his wife, we lived in a two bed brick mews in Lad Lane.  I had it all Scandi inside, it was perfect.  He owned a restaurant on Merrion Row and I won’t lie, I thought I was set around that time.  Thought I had something.’

Rachel can feel the emotion choking her and can’t look at the pity in Simone’s eyes.

‘Before you start thinking he was a prince of the realm, he got me into the gear.  Charlie at first, E then Molly or whatever I could blag.’  Rachel curls up into a ball.  She’s casual about the drug names, as she figures Simone lives in London and works with stock brokers.  If they are anything to the cokehead traders she knew in Dublin, Simone doesn’t need an education in illegal substances.

Simone’s eyebrows draw in, but Rachel continues, ‘then he got clean, kicked me out and went back to his family.’

Simone nods, but looks to Rachel like she’s trying to control her face.  Whether she’s trying to mask horror or sadness Rachel can’t work out.

‘This place,’ Rachel nods at her surroundings, ‘it’s amazing, you rich?’  She stands up, staggering slightly and goes over to Simone’s fridge.  It’s the kind that looks fat with delicious food, but it’s empty except for lettuce and quinoa.  She looks inside then takes out a half full bottle of Grey Goose vodka.

‘Nice,’ says Rachel, twisting off the metal top and taking a slug.

Simone’s phone buzzes and she snatches at it, looking like she meant to cut the caller off.  Rachel can only hear her side, but recognises the deep timbre of a man’s voice.

‘Halim? . . .Yes. . .I mean no, now is not a good time. . . why are you ringing so late?  No, no you don’t need a reason. . .what’s Isha? . . . What?  How come you’re praying so much lately? . . . Sorry Hal, I didn’t mean to sound. . . listen, I can’t do this right now. . .sorry. . .another time, okay?  I’ll call you tomorrow. . . yes, promise.’  Simone blows a kiss down the phone and hangs up.

 Rachel puts down the vodka bottle and emits a fizzing belch.  She staggers forward, laughing to herself at Simone’s puce face.

 ‘Tell me, do the Hargreaves ever enquire about me?’

Simone looks at Rachel like she’s lost her mind.

***

Author's Note

Using UK English and new to site