Selfish People
A female Trainspotting about a young woman who is a romantic but is also determined to overcome the depression of inner-city living in 90s Britain and carve out a life for herself – even if it does means she must become a selfish person to do so.When her nice, repectable mother tells her: "In my day it wasn’t the thing to walk out on one’s husband and live with a strange man. One considered the children." Leah replies "It’s not your day. It’s my day."People in love are selfish. Leah, 28, mother of three, married for 10 years to burned-out Al who got her pregnant in college, is in love with Bailey, the anarchic, feckless hulk who teaches basketball at the Community Project in Bristol where she works. Their courtship, conducted over pints at The Woolpack with other drifters looking for love on the dole, at ‘seshes’ (sessions getting drunk and watching football videos) and in clubs on ecstasy, forces Leah to do the unthinkable and walk out on her children to be available for Bailey. Theirs’ is a totally destructive, out of control relationship. The fact that Bailey confides in Leah a horrendous secret from his childhood is the closest he will ever come to telling her he cares. Their love is doomed from the start, but Leah is a survivor.
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SELFISH PEOPLE
Lucy English
Fourth Estate
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain in 1998 by
Copyright © 1998 by Lucy English
The right of Lucy English to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Lines from Mrs Robinson
Copyright © 1968 by Paul Simon
Used by permission of the Publisher
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Source ISBN: 9781857027631
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780007484935 Version: 2016-02-29
TO MY FAMILY
CONTENTS
This is a dream. I’m in the middle of a field making a daisy chain. The chain is long and curled round and round in my lap. Rachel, next to me, is knitting a picture jumper. Trees, long grass, buttercups, she is knitting the countryside around us. Knitting fast and the picture pours out of her hands. Now a piece of sky, now an elder bush. We don’t speak. The needles clack. I can smell the hot sun on the grass. The field is so full of daisies it’s bursting. The chain is longer. Then the jumper changes and the blue sky becomes grey and more grey. ‘Because I’m sad,’ says Rachel …
She woke up and she knew she had to see Rachel. Across her room the geraniums cast grey shadows on the rug and this confirmed it; Rachel always wore grey. It was eight o’clock, too early for a Sunday morning, but Al was shouting at the children. Her dream snapped shut and she ran downstairs.
‘What’s going on?’ There was milk on the floor and Shreddies everywhere.
‘We were hungry,’ they wept.
‘It’s too much. They woke me at six.’ Al, in his stripy dressing gown, stood in the middle of the room picking damp Shreddies off his foot.
‘I was asleep,’ apologised Leah. She had done the wrong thing, again. He began to clean up, ineffectively. He had fair curly hair which he hadn’t brushed for days and it was now matted at the back. It irritated Leah.
‘Let me do it. You go back to bed.’
‘I can’t. I’ve got two essays to write and a project and I’ve got to hand them in tomorrow.’ He plonked himself on a chair and rolled a cigarette. He had established himself as martyr of the day.
‘I’ll take them,’ said Leah, a bigger martyr. ‘Did you eat any of this?’ Two pink faces watched her tipping squashed Shreddies into the bin.
‘It was Tom’s fault, he did it,’ said Ben.
‘I didn’t!’ And Tom began to cry.
‘Shut up and sit down.’ Leah made toast. She was glad Jo was staying with a friend. Al was sneaking away. ‘I’ll take them to Rachel’s, I haven’t seen her for ages and I had this dream about her …’ She spread the marmalade, but Al was halfway up the stairs.
There was silence in the terraced house kitchen which never seemed to get any light even when it was sunny. It was sunny now. She stood by the sink, her hands in the washing-up water, staring out of the window. The window looked out on to the wall separating them from next door. The children watched her nervously.
‘Yes. We can see Rachel and her boyfriend and Oliver and play with all his toys.’
‘And his battery car?’ asked Ben with a third piece of toast.
‘And his battery car.’
‘Has he got a torch?’ asked Tom.
She ran a bath. She had a bath every morning. Despite the rush getting the children to school and Al’s protests she spent half her life in there. The bathroom was tacked on to the back of the kitchen. It was damp and full of black mould and slugs who slipped in at night to disgust those foolish enough to step on them in bare feet. She poured in rose oil and stepped into the sweet water.
This is my only quiet space. Here I can float. Here I can be queen.
Al rattled the door handle. ‘How long are you going to be? I thought you were going out?’
