Read Online Six Bedrooms by Tegan Bennett Daylight - Free Book Online Page B

black, and we were white, and he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. He grinned at me, knowing he’d caught me off balance. He wore a grey t-shirt, close-fitting, and dark jeans. His smile made the skin on the back of my neck feel hot and tight.
    â€˜Not to me,’ he said. His voice sounded flat London. He was looking around him at the kitchen, at its broad white counters, deep drawers, its double-glazed view of the traffic and the city beyond that. ‘Nice place,’ he added.
    â€˜It’s not ours,’ said Emma quickly.
    I looked curiously at her.
    â€˜We’re paying rent,’ she went on.
    Mates rates , I wanted to say, but it would not have been fair to her.
    They wanted to know if I would like to come out to dinner with them. I knew Emma would have talked Jerome into this. He kept his body turned towards hers.
    I didn’t. I said so. I didn’t have an English accent; I was not in England enough to acquire one. At home in the flat with the porridge and the paper, my voice was not needed at all. A friend had once said to me that I was like a shark that had to keep swimming – if I stopped talking I would die. It did feel as though I was sinking.
    I stood up when the door had closed behind them and went into the bedroom. There was only one bedroom, with twin beds. There was a long mirror fixed to the wall between them. I looked at myself, lifted my Clash t-shirt and clawed a bit at my soft, white stomach. Then I lay down on my bed. Soon I was too cold, so I pulled off my jeans and forced myself between the sheets. After a while, I fell asleep, and didn’t wake when Emma came in.
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    My cousin Karen and her best friend were also living in London, somewhere real, somewhere they had found for themselves. They were nursing in one of the hospitals in the centre of the city. They did a lot of night shifts, and had plenty of time to visit me during the day. Karen wore a leather jacket covered with studs and told me how she’d stamped on the toes of a man who’d shoved her at aSmiths gig. Her Docs had extra-thick soles. Her face was set in a defensive snarl, which faded after an hour or so in the creamy quiet of our flat.
    â€˜I’m fat,’ I said to my cousin – something I could never say to Emma.
    â€˜I’m fat too,’ said Karen, who was looking in our fridge. Her spiked blonde hair brushed the shelves as she bent down to take out a block of cheese.
    â€˜I’ve got a new way of losing weight,’ said Ruth from the living room. She was lying full length on the cream sofa, her boots splayed on the cushions.
    â€˜Yeah?’ said Karen. We came to stand in the doorway, Karen holding the cheese.
    â€˜The twist,’ said Ruth, staring down at her boots.
    â€˜What do you mean?’ said Karen.
    â€˜You know those fifties movies? You never see a fat girl, do you?’
    We watched as she swung her boots round to the floor and stood up. She began to twist on the white pile of the carpet, her dyed hair flopping into her face. It was like the traffic that you could see through the window – odd, jerky, no soundtrack – except the hushing of her boots on the carpet.
    Karen laughed scornfully, and began to tear open the plastic wrapping of the cheese. ‘It wasn’t the twist. It was the Ford pills. They were all taking laxatives.’
    â€˜I wonder if that works,’ I said. Ruth kept twisting. Karen and I met each other’s eyes.
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    Oh, Jerome . I heard Emma say this one night. I had been asleep but woke at the sound of the key in the lock. I was suddenly rigid in my bed. The bedroom door was open. What should I do?
    But they were only saying goodnight. I turned quickly on my side before Emma came in, and didn’t answer when she said softly, ‘Jane? You awake?’
    The next day was Saturday. Emma made me come with her to the National Portrait Gallery. We were early, and sat on the steps in the pale