There were only occasional real rows, but when these did happen they were proper, high-octane, full-volume, three-girl barnies which they all secretly enjoyed. Anything could set one off: the carton of milk that one person had bought and the other two had drunk, the unreplaced washing powder, the hoovering, the boyfriend who vomited on the sofa and just put a cushion on it and left.
“Right, that’s it!” they would scream at each other, “I’m sick of you bitches. I’m moving out!” But they didn’t. They were having too much fun.
After A-levels Polly stayed on as a student and took a degree in sociology. Despite being rather depressingly classified as a mature student, she managed to have a pretty wild time in her first year. Illegal raves were the big thing at the time, the idea being to find somewhere vast, concrete and fantastically unpleasant and stay there for fifteen hours. This, she thought, was the reason drugs suddenly got so big again. It was the only possible way to get through such a horrible night. Polly and the other girls took ecstasy on a number of occasions, but soon got scared of it. There were so many stories going around about people who had only looked at a tab before becoming immediately paraplegic or dead.
The aftermath of a night on E was also rather painful. Polly was used to waking up with hangovers, but coming down in the cold grey light of dawn in the middle of a disused cattle market in Sussex presented a new low even for her. When she took a look around her at some of the dazed specimens upon whom she had bestowed huge kisses and protestations of undying affection on the previous night, she decided that booze was a safer drug.
It seemed to Polly that studying and raving was all students did any more. She had been most disappointed to find how little political activism there was in the colleges. Fear of the future had long since beaten that out of the young. In the sixties and seventies it had been possible for students to rail and rant against society in the comfortable knowledge that they would shortly be joining it at a fairly elevated level. In the eighties, however, the world for graduates had become as uncertain as it was for everyone else and few students felt they had the luxury to worry about other people.
After graduating Polly managed to get elected to Camden Council, with whom she also acquired a job working in the Equal Opportunities Office. It was here that she met and fell in love with another complete disaster.
The disaster’s name was Campbell. Handsome, clever, highly qualified (a doctor), Campbell was also an extremely married man. He and Polly met during a weekend conference entitled “Race, gender, sexual preference and local government”. Until tea on the second day Polly had found the conference only slightly more interesting than being dead, but Campbell changed all that. Like her, he was a Labour Councillor, but unlike her he was a leading light in the local party, very much tipped to be selected as the parliamentary candidate to fight the next election. John Smith had died and Tony Blair’s leadership had ushered in a whole new generation of slick, handsome, media-friendly professionals. Campbell was perfect for it, if a little old at forty.
Their affair was electric, one of those instant physical attractions that cannot be denied. Polly and Campbell missed the final session of the conference, “How Many Members of Senior Management Have a Clitoris?”, because they were having sex in a stationery cupboard. After that they seemed to be incapable of meeting without having sex. They took appalling risks, having it off in council offices, at Campbell’s surgery, behind the speaker’s chair at the town hall, in carparks, behind hedges, in front of hedges, on top of hedges and in the toilet of the Birmingham Pullman.
Polly worried about Campbell’s wife, but Campbell of course assured her that he and Margaret had long since drifted apart. This, sadly, would have come as surprising news to Margaret, who had absolutely no idea that anything was wrong.
If Margaret was ignorant of what was going on, then Polly was not much wiser. Campbell was arrogant and weak and he spun a web of desperate lies around himself and both women. When he and Polly moved in together he told her that the three or four nights he spent away each week were out of obligation to his children. He explained that although he and Margaret were now separate they were still friends and had decided to maintain the family home until the kids grew up. To Margaret he explained that he had taken up a part-time teaching post at the University of Manchester Medical School and hence would be away for half the week.
It could not last, of course. Campbell’s lies got ever more desperate, particularly to Margaret. He told her that Telecom had still not installed a telephone line in his Manchester flat; he told her that for some reason his mobile could not get a signal where he was living. He told her not to phone the university as the cuts had so overstretched the secretarial staff that private calls were frowned upon.
And he told her, of course, he still loved her.
One Sunday morning Margaret turned up while Polly and Campbell were having breakfast together in the house they shared in Islington. Margaret had discovered the address from an electricity bill she had found in the laundry. It was probably the most excruciating encounter of Polly’s life. She had stood there, a piece of toast frozen in her hand while the man who had said he loved her begged tearful forgiveness from the wife he claimed to have left.
Campbell left Polly that day. He had his kids and his political future to consider and the initial all-consuming passion between him and Polly was dying out anyway. Margaret took him back, accepting his protestations that Polly had seduced him. She didn’t want to take him back, she hated the idea, but she was a middle-aged housewife. She did not know what else she could do apart from have it off with the windowcleaner in revenge, which she did.
Polly could no longer afford the house on her own and moved out. After a week or two of sleeping on floors she shifted into the Stoke Newington loft where Jack was to find her. Polly was alone once more, rejected and homeless, just when things had seemed to be shaping up. Polly simply could not believe what an idiot she had been. She did not even have the energy to hate Campbell. She was too annoyed with herself.
Her next all-consuming relationship was to be with Peter the Bug.
30
Jack reached into the bag he’d brought with him.
“I brought some Bailey’s and some Coke. Is that still what you drink?”
“Young girls drink stuff like that, Jack. It’s like eating sweets but with alcohol. We give it up when we discover gin.”
Jack began to put his bottles away.
“Oh, all right, go on, then. I’ll get some glasses.” Polly’s resistance had lasted all of ten seconds. “I haven’t got anything to offer you, I’m afraid,” she said.