He would be the first to admit that drains are not his area of expertise, but even so this blockage seems quite bizarre. The stuff he saw when he opened the manhole cover seemed to be at odds with the pool of blackened sewage he had been expecting. Sure, there’s sewage there, but it’s greasy, as though it’s been mixed with a gallon or two of cooking oil, and the greater part of the chamber seems to be stiff with something that looks unpleasantly like lard. Though there are six people living in this house, all cooking in their tiny kitchens, he finds it hard to believe that even all that could produce this much fat. I must talk to them all, once it’s clear, he thinks. They probably don’t know about fat: the way it hardens and turns to something that almost looks like stone once it’s coating the walls of a sewer. He only knows himself because he went down, as a cub reporter, into the bowels of the city with a team of sewer workers to see for himself, watched them scrape the stuff off the walls like barnacles off the underside of a boat.
‘That’s weird.’
He looks up and finds Collette standing in the kitchen doorway.
‘It looks strange to you?’
‘Yeah,’ says Collette. ‘Is that fat? It looks like fat.’
‘I think so.’
‘Is it moving?’
‘I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like it.’
‘Careful, you don’t want to get a blowback.’
‘Thanks,’ he replies sarcastically. ‘I’ll do my best.’
A burst of laughter from next door; men and women together, talking in confident, ringing tones. The expensively educated in this country seem to have different voices, he’s noticed. Not just the accent: the actual tone. It’s as though money gives you extra lung power, the women’s voices deeper, the men sounding as though their throats begin somewhere deep in their abdomens.
‘Sounds like someone’s having a good time, anyway,’ says Collette.
Hossein looks at her. He knows they’re thinking the same thing. This wasn’t an event they had factored into the plan.
‘It’s okay,’ says Collette, uncertainly. ‘They’ll be done by teatime.’
‘Here’s hoping,’ says Hossein, and bends back to his work.
Deep beneath the earth, something gives. He feels it through his hands: a jerk in the hose, then a slight softening of its rigid hardness. The visible part of the chamber empties, suddenly and swiftly, as though a giant mouth had sucked on the other end. Around the sides, the fat still clings, greyish-white and granular.
‘Yes!’ says Collette. ‘Is that it?’
‘Looks like it,’ says Hossein.
‘Thank Christ for that.’
‘I think I’ll keep this thing running for a bit,’ says Hossein. ‘If this stuff’s all the way down to the sewer, I think we need to get as much of it off the sides as we can.’
‘What is that?’ She comes over and squats beside him, looks disgustedly down at the sludge. He’s suddenly, acutely aware of her proximity, the soft roundness of her bare shoulder in her sundress, the smooth curve of her neck, the golden curls tumbling around her ears. She smells good: like freshly ironed linen and baking bread. He feels himself blush, and turns his gaze studiously back to the drain. ‘Where’s it come from?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It doesn’t look like anything I’ve… we should dig it out, you know. We can’t just leave it there. It’ll just gum everything up again.’
Hossein feels an urge to hurl. The fat looks evil, somehow. Unnatural. And now that the liquid sewage has drained away, he feels even less inclined to touch it. But he knows that Collette is right. There is an old plastic bucket in the corner of the area, covered in paint. If he uses the ladle from Vesta’s kitchen, it will probably work as a receptacle. They can dump it at the end of the garden. Dig a hole, if they have the strength left.
‘Where’s everyone else?’ asks Collette.
‘Cher’s with Vesta in the garden – and I think Gerard Bright is back in his room. I heard him coming in this morning. Thomas, I don’t know.’
‘How’s Vesta doing?’
Hossein shrugs. ‘As you would expect, I suppose.’
‘Yeah.’ She scratches the back of her neck and stares uncomfortably at the drain. ‘I’ll get the bucket,’ she says.
‘Oh, no,’ says Hossein. ‘It’s okay. I’ve got this.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ says Collette, and gives him a sweet, sunshiney smile.
He gives the hose another push, and finds that he can feed another three feet into the drain.
With all the water flying around in the shade, Hossein and Collette have no idea how hot the day has become. Sitting out in the sun is like being on a barbecue. The shed must be as hot as an oven inside, its contents baking like a slow pot roast. Vesta and Cher sit on the deckchairs, their backs turned firmly to the light, their eyes closed, in silence. Vesta looks old. It’s as though she’s aged a decade overnight, deep lines etched around her mouth, her skin grey and toneless, despite the long, long summer.
Cher has covered her eyes with a pair of giant panda sunglasses, but the bruise on her face is still visible around the edges, beginning to turn green as it develops. Her lip has scabbed over and looks worse than it did when Thomas brought her home. She’s a skinny little thing; looks like a baby bird in her sprigged cotton sundress, and her platform wedges. Neither of them stirs, but nor are they asleep.
The party is warming up over the fence, in as much as a British middle-class party ever warms up, the sound of glass clinking and confident voices ringing out in the hot air. The women’s laughter sounds like church bells. If they knew, thinks Vesta, what’s lying there on that concrete floor just yards away from them, they wouldn’t sound so sure of their place in the world. It must be great, living in a world where nothing’s ever undermined your self-belief. Where pension funds and mortgages figure because you think you’re going to live to ninety. Where your prospect for the night involves tipsy, sunburnt sleep and the worst thing that can happen to you is feeling jaded as you start the week, rather than creeping your way through darkened streets with a corpse in the boot of a car.
The sunlight has that strange yellow-gold tinge you only find in cities. Pollution, presumably, but it’s a pleasurable thing to look at through half-closed eyes. Vesta turns her head and soaks up the rays. Hears the power jet’s engine cut out, and its hum be replaced by the sound of rhythmical scraping. Oh, dear, she thinks. I know I should help him, but I can’t do it. People look at me and think I can handle anything, they always have, but they’re wrong.
Now the engine sound is gone, she can hear the conversations next door with greater clarity. A woman is telling a long, boring story about a trip to an all-inclusive resort hotel in Thailand. ‘Gaad, it was gorgeous. Premium-brand spirits and food all day. We didn’t really leave the pool, except to eat. And we had a waterfall in our room! Imagine! Your own waterfall!’
‘Did you go on any trips?’
‘There was a trip to an elephant sanctuary. We went on that, but we didn’t feel like anything much other than sleeping and sunbathing.’
‘Well, one works so hard. Sometimes I’d just give anything for a rest.’
‘I know. Exactly! And really, when you’ve got it all laid on like that, there doesn’t seem much point bothering with doing the tourist thing, really, does there?’
‘Not even shopping?’
‘Oh, yes, obviously shopping!’
The food smells amazing. Fragrant and clean and fresh, as if it’s come straight off the farm. Vesta’s mouth waters as gusts of savoury spice wafts over the fence and fill her nostrils. So funny how the world has changed. I grew up on roly-poly pudding, in a world where parsley sauce was regarded as exotic; and horseradish with your Sunday beef, if you had it. Mum and Dad would practically wrap wet towels round their faces when the Asians moved into the street and the gardens smelled of curry, but it always smelled like adventures to me. I still remember the first time I tasted jerk chicken. I thought I’d gone to heaven. So funny. Once upon a time, smells like those coming over the fence right now were smells you only smelled on the bottom rungs of society. And now they’ve brought it all back here with them and their giant people carriers. They could no more cook without garlic than they could without salt.