The Devil's Staircase (6 page)

‘Ray, did you hear that? Ray!’

He snorted and rolled onto his other side.

There was no noise in the kitchen, none upstairs. She came back down to the ground floor and slowly opened the front door. Nothing. She walked through the kitchen and out into the tiny garden. Nothing. She went back to bed. She was going crazy.

BANG! A huge noise this time, like a heavy wooden window shutting suddenly. Bronny jumped out of her bed, moved towards the door, and slowly opened it.

She screamed when she saw Pete. He was standing right at her door.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

‘Get out!’ Bronny said.

Pete stood still.

‘Get out of my room!’

Bronny listened as he shut the door behind him, as he walked up the stairs, along the landing, and went into the bedroom above hers. She shivered, and she didn’t get back to sleep.

Pete had already gone to work when I got up. Over breakfast I asked everyone how they’d slept. The casual answers indicated that no one else had heard the noises. I asked a few people what they knew about Pete. No one knew anything, but everyone seemed to like him. I didn’t.

I asked Ray the locksmith (in a by-the-way kind of way) if he could open the door to the hall cupboard. ‘I’m dying to know what’s in there,’ I said.

‘No problems, soon as you get back from work,’ Ray assured me.

My second late shift. I arrived at 3 p.m. in my ridiculous netball skirt, watered the plant by reception, and went into the relaxation area. Esther and Kate were reading books behind the towel desk and didn’t say hello. Mitt-woman remained in her room. The days were going to be long, I realised. It was other-worldly – like going back in time. Women lying reading or sleeping, donning towels then discarding them, resting and then resting some more. The digital clock behind the towel desk clicked over so slowly that 10 p.m. seemed like make-believe until it finally came.

I arrived home after ten to find a parcel from Ursula which someone from the Royal had brought in for me. Inside was a photo of her and Dad on the veranda smiling widely, holding a sign that said: ‘We love Bron!’ There were also two huge boxes of Cheesles and a note:

Lovely Bron,

I miss you! I hope you’re having fun and being a bit wild. You need it. But please let me know if you need anything! I’m working too hard and looking forward to doing something other than studying. It’s hot and bright here and I have a large spider called Milly in my room. She says hello too.

Love you,

Urs

xxx

PS: Got the photo. Who’s the hunk with the tattoos? Woah!

I stuck the photo on the wall next to my bed and sprayed the hall with an air-freshener I’d borrowed from work. Cheryl-Anne’s beer farts seemed to have taken over the house. I then placed one Cheesle-ring on each finger, and ate methodically, ten at a time, in private, so that fuckers who didn’t fully appreciate the magic of Cheesles couldn’t intervene.

When I’d finished, I went into the living room to find everyone from next door, and some employees from the Porchester, but I couldn’t see Ray.

‘He’s gone,’ Fliss informed me.

Apparently, some girl he’d met in Thailand a month earlier had texted after breakfast to say she was in France and wanted to do ‘that thing’ with him. It took him ten minutes to pack his rucksack and he was never seen again. So that night, instead of checking out the cupboard and finding out more about Pete and the noises, I threw myself into a farewell party for James the New Zealand cleaner-man.

‘I love this guy,’ said Hamish.

We were taking turns to do pithy moving speeches.

‘The nicest bloody guy I’ve ever met in my life,’ said some girl with blue earrings.

‘My soul mate,’ added thingy from whats it called.

‘The funniest man in London.’

‘We love you, mate!’

‘We fucking
love
you.’

Girls took turns stroking James and crying in his arms as he showed off his one-way ticket to Auckland, waving it wildly with excitement because his girlfriend was going to meet him at the airport and they were going to move in together and it was going to be wonderful. Boys took turns slapping his back and playing a game of pin the tail on
his
donkey. I took turns (a) sucking on Hamish’s bong, (b) opening my mouth for Fliss’s vodka and Red Bull funnel extravaganza, (c) sniffing white powder from Zach’s guitar, (d) playing
God is Dweling in My Heart
on Zach’s guitar, (e) laughing so much that my jaw tingled painfully, (f) confessing to James that – even though he had fucking fired me from a fucking cleaning job – I believed, truly believed, that I loved him more than anyone else in the room and indeed anyone in else in the entire country . . . no, the world, no, the universe.

‘Bronny! Bronny!’ James was tapping on my shoulder. I opened my eyes. I was damp. Early morning light was shining through the window. I was lying on the floor of the living room with at least ten others and James was panicking.

‘Have you seen my ticket?’

‘What? No,’ I said.

James started asking round, making a lot of noise, waking people up.

‘Shut up James,’ Fliss – who was spooning me – said. ‘Fuck off!’ the girl with the blue earrings said.

James shook the girl – her earrings were swinging: ‘But I was showing it to you over in the corner!’

‘Fuck off,’ a boy said from behind the sofa, then another three in unison, from various floor locations:

‘SHUT THE FUCK UP!’

‘PRICK!’

‘FUCK OFF, JAMES!’

So he did. He fucked off to the phone at the Royal to argue with Qantas, then with the insurance company, and then with his (ex-)girlfriend. That night, his face was so long that it clouded our enjoyment of
America’s Next Top Model –
episode six, season five – and we all had to agree that James was a bit of a pain in the arse and we’d never really liked him much anyway. He moved to Earls Court not long after.

I dragged myself from the floor of the living room some time the following morning. Cheryl-Anne, Fliss, Hamish and I had spent most of the weekend watching television, eating stodge, and trying several drugs that were supposed to help with coming down from several others. I didn’t go near my bedroom, preferring instead to stay on the mattress in the living room, and I didn’t hear any strange noises. I started to wonder if it had just been some kind of drainage or plumbing problem, especially as my room seemed to have a rancid damp smell about it.

After I dragged myself up from the living room mattress, Hamish and I swapped our clothes back – finally – then did the whole London thing: Buckingham Palace and that toyshop and Harrods. I felt so comfortable with Hamish. He was my first proper male friend. Androgynous, I’d say. Not at all pervy. If anything, he hardly seemed to look at women at all. We ate homemade peanut butter sandwiches on London Bridge.

‘You want to come on the Eye?’ he suggested.

‘I’m afraid of heights.’

‘How about the Dungeon?’

‘I’ve heard that’s really scary.’

So instead we talked about rural Victoria, where his good friend had lived. He’d been in Ballarat before we met on the flight, and found its colonial buildings and gold-mining history really interesting.

‘I found two dollars’ worth of gold at Sovereign Hill!’ he said.

‘You realise they sprinkle it in each morning?’

‘I know. Oddly, that didn’t make it less exciting.’

He was the first Canadian I’d ever met, but if he was anything to go by, then Canadians were the most down-to-earth, easy-to-be-with people in the world.

When we got home from sightseeing, Francesco was cooking something extravagant in the kitchen and talking secretively to Pete. They were like bitchy schoolgirls – obviously talking about us. I ignored both of them and went back to watch television with my good friend Hamish.

At around four in the morning we ran out of grass. I volunteered to accompany Hamish on a visit to Bobby Rainproof, who apparently based himself at the Polish club across the road.

‘So what does he do?’ I asked Hamish as we crossed the road.

‘He’s a drug dealer.’

‘Oh.’ I knew we were going to buy some stuff from him and all, but for some reason I didn’t equate that with drug dealing. After all, I was an eighteen-year-old from a good – though genetically fucked – family.

Bobby Rainproof was sitting with three elderly Poles, who moved away from the bar when they saw me approaching. ‘What’s up with them?’ I asked Mr Rainproof.

‘Apparently you gave them nightmares,’ the young guy answered.

‘You don’t look like a drug dealer,’ I said.

‘Shhh.
Dio cane!’
Bobby’s expletive and accent indicated that he had been christened Roberto Rainproofo. ‘You want to get us arrested?’

He took Hamish and me into a back room where some more elderly Poles were playing poker. I wondered just how many elderly Poles with glasses there could be in London. We then followed him into an even backer back room where three large bars of dark brown ‘soap’ were laid out on a small table.

‘You not got any grass?’ Hamish asked.

‘Maybe next week,’ Bobby said.

He chopped some of the cannabis and wrapped it in cling film. Hamish and I watched, entranced, as he ripped a piece from the industrial-sized roll and laid the plastic on the table. He did an extremely neat and thorough job of wrapping it. Hamish handed him thirty pounds and put the stuff in his pocket.

‘Grazie,’
Hamish said, and we followed the good-looking twenty-something from La Spezia through the back-back room, the back room, and the bar. He double-kissed us then we crossed the road to our eagerly awaiting best friends.