email a few shops, some friends who are fel ow jewel ers to find if they’l be at the next trade fair, in ExCel in May, and I get an application form from Tower Hamlets for a grant. Though even this feels wrong; I don’t think I deserve the money.
What I need to do, I know, is keep on like this. Keep doing things. Keep coming to the studio and actual y making stuff, having a plan, having tea with the others, instead of using this place as an escape from the lonely, echoing flat, fil ed with Oli’s stuff. I open the unopened letters from the bank, putting them in a pile. I make a list of things to do. And as I stand up and stretch, slinging my bag over my shoulder, I put my sketchbook in the centre of the table, so it’l be the first thing I see when I come in tomorrow. Feeling suddenly hopeful, I close the door behind me.
As I walk past Ben’s studio I’m about to knock, but I can hear him and Tania talking so I pause, listening for a second.
I can tel by the tone of their voices – slightly louder and higher than usual – that it’s not the kind of conversation you want to interrupt. Normal y I’d knock anyway, or cal out ‘Bye’ but perhaps I need to stop hanging out with them instead of going home. Yes, I’m going home.
I say goodnight to Jamie and as I have my hand on the door I open my bag, quickly, just checking. Yes, Cecily diary’s stil there, nestling at the top of my things, folded up inside my sketchbook.
One of the weirdest things about my ‘situation’ at the moment is the label ing of it. Do I stil say ‘we’ when I’m talking about where ‘we’ live or how long ago ‘we’ bought the new flat-screen TV? It feels so odd, yet to say ‘my status-TBC-husband and I’ is also weird. ‘We’ live on Princelet Street, off Brick Lane, a couple of minutes’ walk from my studio.
When I first left col ege I worked for two years on a stal in Camden Market and lived in West Norwood, so I know what a long commute is like. I was only there in the mornings, too – in the afternoons I’d do my own stuff – so it was nearly three hours of travel ing for three hours of work, not a good exchange system. I had about fifty pence a week left to play with, if that.
We moved here after much negotiation. Oli flatly refused to cross the river, especial y not to live that far out. He wanted to stay in North London.
We compromised on East London, and it was one of our better decisions, because I can’t imagine living anywhere else now. I have lived in West, East and South and worked in North London, and this is where we both wanted to be. I don’t know what ‘we’ think about that any more, but I love it here, and though East London isn’t everyone’s favourite biscuit, I wouldn’t live anywhere else. I know where I want to be. Until a decade ago or so round here, Spitalfields, Shoreditch, Whitechapel, al of it was a real no-man’s-land, abandoned since the days of Jack the Ripper, but now it is quite hilariously trendy. The slums they cleared people out of in the sixties, moving them into new-builds, are now Georgian terraces sel ing for half a mil ion quid.
My road is not as posh as the great Huguenot weavers’ houses on Fournier Street, which is now almost al private houses or museums masquerading as private houses, each front door now a tasteful olive, dark grey or black, shutters immaculately reproduced in the original style and painted to match. Our street is one block up, a bit quieter, the houses a bit more dilapidated. If you half-close your eyes, you real y can imagine some weaver hurrying back along the cobbled street through the mud and rain and opening the dark, sturdy front door to be greeted by a blaze of light and a warming fire. It feels less like something out of a film set and more like a place where people have lived and stil live now. People like us.
I walk home that afternoon, past the guys pushing the empty rails from Petticoat Market, past the sweet Victorian primary school where it is home-time. Children are flooding out in their blue sweaters, throwing themselves against their parents, jabbering excitedly to each other. Two little girls are in a minibus, kissing each other and playing with each other’s hair, while an adult shovels more children in next to them. I stand and watch them, smiling, until one of the parents stares at me. Embarrassed, I walk on, pul ing my scarf more tightly around me in the cold, hitching my overnight bag onto my shoulder.
I skid on a puddle and nearly slip. ‘Mind how you go,’ says one of the ever-present waiters who stand outside the curry houses al day, trying to entice punters inside. ‘It’s cold, freezing, be careful, yes?’
It is freezing, I feel it now. I am sick of this winter. It’s been never-ending. It’s almost March, and stil so cold. I look up at the grey-white sky, heavy with cloud. The contrast with Cornwal is total, in fact. There are no trees on Brick Lane, only brightly il uminated signs, flashing LED lights, misleading banners (‘Winner of Best Curry Restaurant’ – Where? When? According to whom?), comforting, spicy smel s which make my confused stomach lurch with nausea and at the same time growl with hunger.
It is past five and getting dark. It is a night for staying in, for going to the Taj Stores opposite and loading up on poppadoms and chutney, it’s a night for wrapping oneself in scarves and blankets and curling up on the sofa. I think how nice a takeaway from the Lahore Kebab House would be.
If Oli was here perhaps he’d get it on his way back from work. If Oli was here we’d watch a few more episodes of
I turn into Princelet Street, waving at another waiter, standing outside the Eastern Eye Balti House. ‘How was the funeral?’ he says, bowing his head slightly as if acknowledging it. He wears a pale blue waistcoat and shirt. He must be freezing.
‘It was . . . fine,’ I say, touched. I wil never know how to answer that question properly.
‘That’s life,’ the waiter cal s after me, nodding philosophical y. ‘Life and death.’
Just as I am getting into the flat, my mobile rings. I struggle with my overnight bag and my scarf, getting tangled up as I delve into my handbag to find the phone and press it immediately to my ear.
‘Hel o?’
‘Hel o? Darling? Where are you?’
It’s my mother. I freeze. ‘I’m at home,’ I say, after a moment. I dump my overnight bag on the floor. ‘Er – where are you? Are you stil in Cornwal ?’ I stare at the bag.
‘Yes,’ says Mum. ‘Off tomorrow evening.’
‘Um—’ I don’t know what to say to her. There’s a silence. ‘So . . . how’s the clearing up going?’
‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘Fine. We’re seeing the solicitors tomorrow, to sort out the foundation and the funding. Archie and I.’
