Simone

There is nobody to phone. For hours at the gym, Simone thinks about this. If only there was a friend she could call upon to pop into the flat and check that Terry was there, looking after Jasmine. A friend, or a neighbour, or her mother even. But after Noah died, most of the friends he’d once shared with her seemed to dissolve into the shadowed stairwells of the estate, as though she was a burning flame who might turn them, like Noah, to ash. Once Terry was on the scene, the few that had remained soon vanished too in a puff of disgust or disappointment. One of them, Fiona, tried to pull her aside around that time, making one last attempt at anchoring her, on behalf, Simone presumed, of Noah’s tribe, or as part of his legacy. Fiona was a few years older than they were and already finished a course in film studies at Middlesex University, now a production secretary at a TV company with trendy offices in Camden. She had arrived in a cloud of purpose and whisked Simone out of the flat to a café. Over tea and cake she’d spouted something about the strength of women, and the specific strength Noah had seen in Simone, and the different kind of power that only pretended to be strength in Terry, and the strength that was needed now. But Simone hadn’t wanted to hear any of that then. She’d eaten the cake, but barely nodded at the young, together woman opposite her, and after a while Fiona had resorted to appeals about what was good for Dominic; but Simone still hadn’t nodded, or agreed, or been suitably reformed or inspired, and Fiona never called again. She spotted her occasionally on the Concourse, but Fiona was always hurrying. Away. Not long after that, Simone and Terry had pushed her parents into the same oblivion, and she had seen to Lewa’s departure herself long before. As far as childhood friends were concerned, she still had the phone numbers of a few from school, but she’d never been popular, and those that she’d once counted as loyal were not the type to envy or admire a descent into poverty and recklessness, nor wanted it to rub off on them. So there was nobody. There is nobody.

Except Terry.

She can’t phone Terry. The not knowing is exactly what he intended for her, and she can’t go home in case he’s there, waiting for that. But all morning, with every smile she gives to a gym member, with every swipe of their cards, every tap of a keyboard, she feels the betrayal she has chosen, the treachery she’s inflicted upon her daughter, leaving Jasmine with Him.

The crystallisation of this thought comes as a surprise to Simone. She’d understood a long time ago how volatile Terry could be. She’d realised that the anger beneath his skin sometimes exploded out of him. She’d seen that he had always to be right, which meant she would spend her life wrong. But she had also always believed that he didn’t mean to hurt her, them. It was only because he was so hurt himself. And besides, he loved her, he did. It all came from a place of care. Jasmine in particular was his blood. Is his blood. He dotes on her, sometimes. But suddenly, the thought of leaving Jasmine with Terry fills Simone with dread.