‘There were no challenges left. He’d flown higher and further than anyone had ever flown.’
The woman speaking was his wife. The second one. She was obviously prettier and younger than the first. The spacewife said it wasn’t true that he was a recluse, just that he was a media recluse. Chloe smiles. She can relate to that, except he had a whole ranch to hide in, while she’s only got these four yellow walls and a curtain between her and them. She wonders how long it will be before they find her. There’s always someone who needs the money, who’s willing to sell a story to a tabloid. The spaceman threw himself deeper into work. He went into the world of business. That sounds like a nice world, not open and empty like the moon, but a busy world, a world you could hide in; a whole planet of computers and desks and photocopiers. She closes her eyes and sees star-fighters flying at lightning speed through a landscape of filing cabinets. It’s too hot in the room; she can’t settle. She gets up to open the window. The hinge is fixed so that it only creates a five-centimetre gap, but it’s better than nothing. She notices a car waiting on the kerb, engine running.
‘He was true to himself. He was the man that you saw. That was him,’ the spacewife said.
What you see is what you get. She closes the curtain again and gets back into bed. That’s me too, she thinks, and turns on her side, pulling the quilt over her. She’d like to sleep now, it’s been a long day, but someone is ringing the doorbell below. A man shouts into the intercom:
‘You’ve got to talk to me!’
There’s a silence and she hears the front door open. They shouldn’t let a man in here, not at this time of night. She gets up and peers through a small gap where the curtains don’t quite meet, not wanting to draw attention to herself. The man hasn’t gone inside, he’s standing on the path and the young woman who welcomed her this morning is standing close to him. Chloe can’t hear what they’re saying, but the woman is trying to calm the man. It looks like she knows him; they stand close but they don’t touch. There is no violence between them and the man is pleading with his hands. Chloe is relieved that it’s an officer he wants to speak to, not one of the women. Then she corrects herself. The Asian girl on duty isn’t an officer, she’s something else; Chloe can’t remember the word. There will be new words, new jobs now she’s on the outside. The ‘us’ and ‘them’ will have different labels. The young man is Asian too. He wears a suit, but his shirt is hanging out of his trousers and his tie loose around his open collar. Chloe thinks he must be the staff woman’s boyfriend. Link worker. That’s it. She’s Chloe’s link worker. She gets back into bed, thinking about links in a chain, links in a fence, the missing link.
The door closes and for a few moments there’s quiet. Then someone’s kicking the door from the outside, kicking it so hard Chloe can feel it coming up through the building, vibrating through her thin, spongy mattress. The front door opens again and another voice, male this time, clearly threatens that the police will be called. Chloe gets up and shuts the window. As she gets back into bed, she reaches for the radio she got this morning on the market. It plugs into the mains, so she can have it on all night.
Under the quilt a DJ’s voice joins her. He introduces a guy called Jimmy Page and together they tell a story about Jimmy Page’s mystery guitar. The DJ and Jimmy must know the story, but the DJ’s asking questions to make sure Jimmy doesn’t miss bits out. She listens carefully to see if Jimmy sounds like he means what he’s saying, or whether he’s just going through the motions. It’s a special skill when someone’s asking you about stuff you’ve said a thousand times before. She’s an expert in it. Panels and boards and psychologists and governors. She’s been over the same things again and again with them.
The guitar is in the house when Jimmy Page is growing up. It doesn’t belong to anyone and he doesn’t know how it got there. He sees someone playing a Lonnie Donegan tune at school, and he wants to be able to do that. He goes home to get the guitar and the rest …
She doesn’t hear the rest. She wakes up later and there’s a woman talking. The music is different. She switches the radio off and puts it on the floor, carefully. Behind her closed eyes, Jimmy Page and the spaceman dance together, silhouetted against a huge Hollywood moon.
Chloe wakes in a light-filled room. For a moment, she thinks she must have taken an extra tablet. She can’t focus, can’t snap out of the heavy, sweat-damp sleep of messy dreams. The sun is pouring through the glass, cooking up the air. She remembers closing the window to keep the noise out, but now it smells of the trapped odour of all the other women who have slept here before her. She pushes the quilt off and peels her damp T-shirt away from her belly, flapping it to cool her skin. The display on her phone reads ten-twenty. Confused, it takes a moment to sink in that this is ten-twenty in the morning; she’s slept for eleven hours. She leans over and reaches for the bottle of water she filled from the tap last night. It’s blood heat, but she swills it around her mouth and swallows it anyway.
Finally she swings her legs round and sits up, dizzy for a moment. She takes the can of Icy Mist body spray from the top of the bedside locker and sprays a long burst, coughing as the droplets drift back towards her and sting her throat. She bought it yesterday in Boots. On her way to the till, she browsed the lipstick testers, inhaling the greasy sweetness that took her right back to her childhood, watching her mum get ready for work. Don’t touch me! You’ll mess up my face. She left the lipsticks on their stand and paid one ninety-nine for the own-brand body spray.
She moves on shaky legs to the window and opens it again, letting a puff of warm air into the room. A bus is pulling up outside. There’s something she has to remember. Her link worker mentioned it yesterday. A trip out, did she want to come? A trip into the city centre, on the bus, or they could walk, it would depend on the weather. Meet at ten-thirty. She looks at her watch. Ten twenty-eight. Shit. She drops the curtain and pulls off the T-shirt, sprays her body all over and grovels in her bag for a clean pair of knickers. No time for socks. She pulls her canvas pumps over sticky feet. In two minutes she’ll be ready.
The girl in the office is wearing a pale pink dress over black leggings. Her shoes are tiny sandals, covered in pink sequins, as if she’s going to a party, not on a sightseeing trip. She tells Chloe that she’s waiting for a couple more and then they’ll set off, and she might as well sit in the garden until they’re ready, since it’s so hot. Chloe wishes she’d made more effort to remember the girl’s name. She can’t ask her now. It will make her sound stupid.
The garden at Meredith House is more like a yard, surrounded by an old brick wall. Someone’s filled a few pots with busy Lizzies and begonias. Chloe would have chosen something textured, like gazanias, whose petals she would like to press against her cheek to feel their softness. The back door of Meredith House opens and she senses someone watching her. She’s not going to turn around; she’s got stuff to look at. This is her time and her space. Let them cram in their sweaty TV room with the curtains closed, watching daytime chat shows, if they want to, but they should leave her alone.
‘You Chloe?’
She nods.
‘Not deaf then. Thought you might be.’
She turns then, thinking this woman is trying to wind her up, but she sees someone smiling through grey, broken teeth. The woman has a scar pulling her cheek up to the corner of one eye. Despite the damage, Chloe sees softness in her face. Maybe the smile is genuine. She does her best to return it.
‘I’m Emma,’ the other woman says. ‘Taheera said you were coming on the trip into town. I think it’s just the two of us. The others can’t be bothered.’