She shook her head slowly. ‘A quarter of a million people in one slum,’ she said. ‘It beggars belief. Did you know one child dies a violent death there every eight hours?’
‘Do you think you got enough for your film?’
‘I wish,’ she said ruefully. ‘There were so many stories to be told: happy, sad, some even terrifying. But I’m still missing the angle. At the moment it’s just a lot of very poor people in appalling circumstances. I need a narrative to pull it all together.’
Gabriel took a piece of paper from his pocket and held it out to her.
‘What’s this?’
‘Phone numbers,’ he said. ‘The first one is for Father Diaz. He looks after six hundred orphans in twelve sites around Parador. His brother was Pablos Cavalas, one of the most notorious drug-dealers in the late eighties. The second number will help you arrange an interview with the president.’ He smiled. ‘Although I doubt you’ll get much there, I’d be interested how he justifies El Tumba to you.’
‘And the last one?’
‘The third number is for Felix Philipe, coach for the Parador national football team. Five years ago he opened a soccer academy for the children of the slums. Half of his squad are men who’ve grown up in the barrios.’ Gabriel shrugged. ‘I think you should find your angle in there somewhere.’
Grace stood up and hugged him. ‘Thank you, Gabriel,’ she said simply, resting her chin on his shoulder. They stood like that for a long moment, then Gabriel turned back to the door.
‘I’m proud of you, Grace,’ he said, his eyes flicking to hers and holding them for a second. ‘I really am.’
And for the first time in a long time, Grace felt the same way.
58
April 2009
Alex came to, jerking awake.
‘What the hell?’ he mumbled, before wincing at the pain in his neck.
I fell asleep on the sofa again, he thought numbly. In the corner of the room, the TV was still playing with the sound off. Breakfast TV. Bloody hell, I haven’t seen that in years.
Squinting, shading his eyes from the bright morning light, he pushed himself on to one elbow, shook a bent cigarette from the pack and lit it, coughing the smoke straight out again. He sat forward, trying to ignore the thumping in his head, and picked up the various cans and bottles crowding the coffee table. Empty . . . empty . . . a-ha! An inch of whisky sloshing around in the bottom of the bottle. He tipped it up, feeling the chink of the glass on his teeth, and gagged it down in three swallows. And that was when it hit him, as it did every morning: the sinking, churning feeling in his stomach – the feeling that he was still alive and had another day to face. He ran to the toilet and vomited.
Walking back into the lounge, wiping his mouth, he could see that every available surface was covered in crushed cans, open tins and pizza boxes. What a shit-hole, he thought. He had barely left his west London home since he’d returned from his mum’s funeral six months earlier. He had an arrangement with the man in the off-licence to bring him a box of booze and snacks every day, taking the empties away when he left, although Alex had to admit he’d been getting a little lax on tidying up over the past week.
Maureen had died in her sleep, but that brought him little comfort. He had watched her suffer for weeks, months, the pain creasing into her face. She’d been brave, of course, hadn’t wanted Alex to see how much she was suffering, but the cancer swept through her so quickly, the doctors had struggled to keep up with the morphine. During the last days, they had let her come home, and Alex had even allowed himself to think she was getting better. She was sitting up in bed, her eyes bright and clear, talking about the old days, when she and Alex’s father had bought their first car, a Hillman Imp, and had taken it for a run out to Southport. Now, Alex thought it had all been for his benefit, to make him feel better, not her.
‘It’s going to be OK, love,’ she would say whenever he cried.‘You’ll be strong for me, won’t you?’
Back in London, Alex closed his front door and quietly fell to pieces. He felt utterly lost, adrift in the world with nothing solid to cling to. All he could do was blot it out, drinking anything that came to hand: sherry, gin, the ouzo he had brought back from his trip to Greece with his mum. Drugs were all around him in his part of London, and he tried them all, plus a long list of prescription drugs. He just wanted the pain to stop.
He walked over to the TV and snapped it off, then slowly climbed the stairs, running a tepid bath. When he was ready, he took a cab into Soho. No one bothered him in the West End’s busy, grimy streets. Two weeks’ beard growth and unwashed hair helped, as did the bottle in his hand. No one wanted to bother the crazy drunk guy with the red-rimmed eyes. Besides, since his split with Melissa, Al Doyle was no longer a ‘celeb’. He was back to being an everyday, common or garden musician. He barely rated a mention on Perez Hilton any more.
He dropped in at the Coach and Horses, still quiet before the lunch rush. He ordered a double brandy and a pint and retreated to a corner to read his book, an account of the ‘Enfield Poltergeist’, a malevolent spirit th
at had apparently possessed a teenage girl in the 1970s. He had always been interested in the unexplained, but since his mum’s death he had begun to think about it a lot more. Maybe good spirits could come back and watch over you, he thought. Or maybe bad ones, angry ones, could come back and screw you up. Maybe we’re all ghosts, thought Alex. Maybe this whole thing is all an illusion.
By seven o’clock, Alex had been in eight pubs, an off-licence and a sushi restaurant, where he drank the sake and left his teriyaki untouched. By nine o’clock he was in Soho House, slurring his words as he said, ‘Dom Perignon, barman,’ banging his hand on the counter. ‘And make it snappy.’
That was the last thing that Alex would remember clearly, the point where his anchor gave way. Time seemed to be telescoping and contracting. He felt shaken up and disorientated, like he was on a rollercoaster he couldn’t see. He was blacking out, then tuning in again, with no idea what had happened in between. First the waitress was bringing the champagne over to the table, then the bottle was empty, upside down in the ice bucket. Next he looked up and there were two girls sitting next to him, then he glanced away and they were gone. Drink through it, said a voice in his head. Keep drinking and it will all go away. He ordered some tequila, then some brandy, then some exotic beer that tasted of leaves. Then he found himself sitting on his own. Had he been asleep? Suddenly all these jump-cuts were starting to scare him. He wanted to get home. But where was home exactly?
‘Here you are, mate,’ said the driver. ‘Camden High Street.’
‘What? Why are we here?’Alex couldn’t remember getting into the cab, let alone telling him to go to north London.
The cabbie gave a world-weary shrug. ‘You tell me, pal.’
Alex looked around as the cab pulled away. At least now he knew where he was. He was standing at the door to the flat where the rest of Year Zero had lived all those years ago. The buzzers were the same; only the labels had changed. The top flat bell, which the lead singer had labelled as ‘Jez and the Others’, now read ‘Taya B.’ In fact, now he looked, a lot of things had changed. The kebab shop opposite the station was now a florist’s and the corner shop that sold cheap bread was now a bistro. It had been cleaned up a lot. Alex didn’t feel at home here either. He stumbled along the street, the headlights of the passing cars blurring into streams and trails, the people walking past giving him a wide berth. Another drink, the voice whispered, just to steady your nerves. Haltingly, he approached a pub – wasn’t it a bank? – but a penguin-suited bouncer stepped out, one hand up. ‘Not tonight,’ he said not even recognising him. Alex began to protest, then saw the look in the man’s eyes and kept walking, turning into a convenience store with a neon sign in the window: ‘24/7’. That’s me all right, thought Alex, giggling to himself. He pinballed down the narrow aisles, bouncing off shelves either side, colliding with a carousel display of cheap plastic children’s toys and sending some crashing to the floor. ‘Sorry! Sorry!’ he said, gathering them back up. ‘My mistake, no harm done.’ Glancing towards the counter, he grabbed a water pistol and stuck it into his pocket. That’ll teach the buggers to rip me off, he thought crazily.