The Sleeping and the Dead

Outside it was hot already, though here on the coast there was usually a breeze. Just as well because she had on what she’d been wearing in the club the night before – a lacy black dress and tarty sandals. The shoes were OK for dancing but they knackered her ankles if she tried to walk any distance. She took them off to go barefoot and as she stepped in and out of the shadow thrown by the trees she felt the changes of temperature on the soles of her feet.

The houses round here were big Edwardian semis set back from the road. In one of these houses Joe lived. She took care not to turn her head as she sauntered past.

Her home was more ordinary. A tidy semi on a tidy estate. Her parents had bought it from new when she was five. It would have been her mother’s choice. They must have realized by then that there’d be no other children. This boring three-bedroomed box would be big enough.

Inside she switched off the alarm and went straight to the kitchen. She put on the kettle, stuck a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster, took orange juice from the fridge and drank it straight from the carton. Inside her head she heard her mother telling her off about that. How pathetic could you get? She was eighteen, an adult, and there was her mother, nagging away at her, a worm inside her head: ‘For goodness’ sake, Rosalind, can’t you get a glass?’

In her bedroom, when she switched on the light the bulb fizzled and died so she had to open the curtains. She saw the place in daylight for the first time in months. There was an unpleasant, musty smell, which she’d tried for too long to ignore. She pushed a window open. In the garden next door a neighbour was pegging baby clothes on to the line. Rosie waved to her. Before the job in the pub she used to babysit quite often. The woman waved back. Rosie saw pity on her face, imagined her gossiping to the rest of the street. ‘Poor kid. Her dad’s left. And they seemed such a happy family.’ When the woman bent to lift more laundry from the basket Rosie stuck up two fingers at her back. She turned over the pile of clothes on her floor like a peasant turning hay with a fork. For the pub she had to wear a uniform – black trousers, white shirt, stupid little green apron and green bow-tie. The tie and the apron were still in the bag from her last shift. There was a white shirt in the pile but the collar and the cuffs were filthy and there were spatters of red wine down the chest. Her father had left clothes when he’d decamped the month before and her mother had been too civilized to throw them out. She’d moved them instead into the spare-room wardrobe. As if he might return one day as a lodger. There, on a hanger, was a single white shirt.

There was no sign of the trousers and the hassle was starting to bug her. Her mother had recently dreamed up a rule about Rosie doing her own washing and since then things had been chaotic on the clothes front. She’ll not have stuck to it, Rosie thought. It’ll be like all the other threats and ultimatums. She’ll not have been able to stand the thought of her daughter going out in mucky pants. And sure enough her trousers were washed and dry with a load of towels in the tumble in the utility room. In the spirit of conciliation which had led her to phone her mother she folded the towels and loaded the washing machine with part of the muck heap from the bedroom floor. She rolled the trousers into a tight ball and shook them out. She never understood why anyone bothered with ironing.

She looked at her watch. She could have done with a shower but there was no time, so she cleaned off last night’s slap, put on more and she was ready. She only realized how dirty her feet were when she pushed them into her flat work shoes. No one would see. The pub was a big, white place close to the sea front. It was called the Promenade, known as the Prom. She’d got the job because she had the nerve to ask. Like all her friends she’d been drinking there since she was sixteen and she’d thought working in the place would be a dream. In fact when it was full of kids in the evenings, being behind the bar was a bit of a drag, not the buzz she’d expected. She had to watch her mates drinking, having a good time and usually she was too busy to exchange more than a couple of words. Sometimes she saw more than she wanted to, heard more too. It was as if the uniform made you invisible.

The first inkling she’d got about her father had been in the pub. Two lads, who she’d known fine well were in Year 11 and shouldn’t have been in the place anyway, were playing darts. She’d been emptying ashtrays. It was a Friday night, somebody’s birthday. The Prom was packed. They’d had to yell.

‘They say he’s going to get the sack.’

‘You don’t get the sack for screwing someone you work with.’

‘You do if you screw them on the staff-room floor. My dad’s a governor. He should know.’

‘You can’t blame him though, can you? I mean, have you seen her on the trampoline?’