Chapter Three
Chrissie slotted her key into the front door of the crumbling maisonette she shared with Andrew. Their home was on a sprawling council estate on the outskirts of Gravesend. She was desperate to move. She’d love a house like Amber’s – a dear little two-up-two-down in New Ash Green, complete with chocolate-box sized garden filled with flowering tubs. Amber’s home was surrounded by woodland pathways and restful fields. By contrast, Chrissie’s estate was bounded by a network of roads punctuated with industrial parks and chimneys that constantly belched smoke.
The estate, no matter what hour of the day or night, was never quiet. Many of its residents were unemployed. There was always somebody playing music at three in the morning, or hanging out on a street corner doing a dodgy deal, or having a domestic indoors, or screaming at their kids – like Fran on the other side of the maisonette’s dividing wall. At least twice a week a police siren wailed through the meandering roads that criss-crossed like scars on a convict’s face. The Old Bill’s flickering light would flash against Chrissie’s bedroom curtains, like a blue spaceship coming in to land.
For Chrissie, the only plus for living here was the bus stop directly outside the estate. Monday to Friday the local transport service rumbled all the way into town dropping her outside the front door of Hood, Mann & Derek. Fortunately, the fares weren’t too pricey. Which was just as well, because Andrew was always asking Chrissie to bail him out of financial trouble. He had a credit card that delivered a regular statement full of spiralling figures. More often than not he couldn’t meet its monthly minimum payment. Chrissie couldn’t remember the last time Andrew had paid his share of the rent. His contribution to the grocery bill was getting smaller by the week. She couldn’t understand what he did with his money. After all, he worked. He kept telling her that electricians didn’t make very much, but she was sure they earned a lot more than a secretary working for Gravesend solicitors. Sometimes Andrew did the odd private job, but where the money went she didn’t know. Once she’d dared to ask, and Andrew had got very stroppy. He’d irritably countered that he didn’t ask how she spent her wages, so to quit nagging how he spent his. She’d answered him back and said, ‘It’s quite obvious how I spend my wages – I pay for your share of things.’ He’d punished her bluntness by ignoring her for an entire week. In the end Chrissie had been the one to deliver a grovelling apology to smooth things over.
Chrissie loved Amber and Dee like sisters. It went without saying they were both her best friends. However, she hadn’t confided in them about how Andrew really was. Why? Because she was ashamed. Instead she painted a picture of him being a hard-working guy, one who didn’t take her out because he was always busy with private weekend jobs to supplement their income. She also made out they were saving up to get on the property ladder, which legitimately excused her from Amber and Dee’s occasional trips to Bluewater shopping mall. Her besties thought nothing of blowing twenty quid on a lipstick they didn’t need, but had to have because they liked the colour.
Chrissie spent her wages on essentials, never frivolity. Her wardrobe for work was a supermarket clothing brand. It was more affordable than the garments hanging on the mannequins of Bluewater’s brightly lit shops. To Chrissie, the enormous mall was a slice of heaven. She’d love nothing more than to join Amber and Dee as they went into shoe shop after shoe shop and deliberated whether to buy Ugg boots in tan or black. She couldn’t imagine spending over a hundred pounds on such an item. Instead Chrissie had bought herself cheap imitations from e-Bay at ninety-nine pence.
As Chrissie entered the maisonette’s narrow, cramped hallway, the television blared from the lounge. She stuck her head around the door to greet Andrew. He was sprawled in an armchair, a can of lager in one hand. On the floor, by his feet, were two empty tins.
‘Hi,’ she smiled.
‘Hello,’ he replied, and belched loudly. ‘What’s for dinner? I’m starving.’
Chrissie lived in hope that one day she’d walk in and find the table laid and a hot meal awaiting her. That was what Amber said her boyfriend did for her. Lucky Amber. How she’d love a boyfriend like Matthew. No wonder Amber was desperate to wed him. He was so hard working. So caring. Chrissie wanted to marry simply because that was how she’d been brought up. Her parents had expounded the virtues of keeping her head down at school in order to bag a decent job. They’d also suggested it was through the work place one met a like-minded person with similar values. Their lessons to Chrissie had been simple: study, date, become engaged, marry, have children, then bring your own children up to do exactly the same thing you’d done. But somehow the game plan with Andrew had gone wrong.
They’d met at college when he’d been studying to be a spark and she’d been on her secretarial course. Chrissie had been instantly attracted to the good-looking lad with the floppy fringe, and he’d made a bee-line for her. So far, so good. They’d moved into the maisonette together not long after they’d both started work. Previously, Andrew’s divorced aunt had lived in it, but she’d met and subsequently married a much older man with an enormous pension pot. She’d moved into her new husband’s house but, rather than relinquish the maisonette, she’d opted to illegally sub-let the council property to Andrew and Chrissie at a discounted rate. The maisonette was meant to be a stop-gap home while they saved up for their own property. But somewhere along the way Andrew had settled into a routine of going to the pub for darts nights, or PlayStation games on a rota with other beer-swilling buddies.
Chrissie absolutely hated it when it was Andrew’s turn to ‘host’ a games evening. The lounge would be filled with burly men stabbing at consoles, carrying on like they were Darth Vader taking over new universes. Invariably, on those nights, Chrissie would absent herself. She’d climb into bed with an old paperback that Dee had finished with, only to nod off but then be awoken in the early hours by the stink of weed creeping through the gap under the bedroom door. Last time around she’d caused a bit of a rumpus. How dare Andrew let these men outstay their welcome and stink her home out with illegal substances!
Throwing back the thin duvet she’d marched, bug-eyed and sporting bed-hair, towards the lounge. The door had crashed back on its hinges startling everybody.
‘That’s IT!’ she’d bellowed. ‘Some of us have work in the morning. Get your feet off my chairs and shift your backsides out of my house, NOW. And take your funny fags with you – do you HEAR?’
Andrew had been appalled. He’d squinted at her through the fug, his eyes glassy from dope, as one of his mates had rounded furiously on Chrissie.
‘Fuck me, Andy. Is this yer missus? I’d give ’er a right pasting for speaking to yer like that. It’s fuckin’ humiliating. What a cow.’
‘GET OUT,’ Chrissie had screamed. On the other side of the maisonette’s wall, Fran’s kids had woken up and started bawling. Seconds later Fran could be heard shrieking at them to shut up and go back to sleep.
After everyone had left, Andrew had been so disgusted he’d spat at her. Chrissie had been stunned. In the morning he’d grudgingly apologised, but remained livid that she’d laid down the law in front of his mates. The ridiculous thing was, Chrissie had ended up feeling the guilty one. Just because she didn’t do recreational drugs, did that make her a prude for not allowing Andrew and his mates to “relax” with a bit of wacky-baccy? Had she really been bang out of order? Was she a harridan?
Occasionally, and it really was very occasionally, Chrissie would fantasise about being swept off her feet by some gorgeous hunk who didn’t run up credit cards, didn’t drink gallons of lager, didn’t break wind to order, and actually gave her some attention. But another part of Chrissie pushed such thoughts away. She had no self-esteem or confidence. She didn’t believe herself to be attractive, like Amber or Dee. Her long brown hair was never styled. She wore it every day in a ponytail that trailed the length of her back. She didn’t have money to waste on hairdressers and highlights, and she rarely wore make-up.
‘Any chance of eggs and chips?’ asked Andrew, jolting her back to the present. ‘I’m off to the pub in half an hour with the boys, and need something to mop up the booze.’ He patted his stomach by way of explanation. ‘Oh, and before I forget, the lads will be here tomorrow night. It’s my turn to be host, so no barging in and kicking off.’
‘That’s fine,’ she said stiffly. ‘I’ll be out.’
Andrew’s eyes widened with surprise. ‘Oh? I was counting on you making us all chip butties.’
‘Sorry,’ she shrugged.
‘Do you have to go?’ asked Andrew irritably.
‘Yes. It’s a work thing,’ said Chrissie, bending the truth. ‘It would be bad form not to.’
‘Right,’ Andrew huffed. ‘Well don’t let me hold you up with the egg and chips.’
Chrissie shut the door. On her way to the kitchen, she hung her coat on one of the pegs in the hall. She was twenty-seven years old, but right now felt older than Cougar Kate, although nothing like as glamourous. Ha, and she was hoping some unknown clairvoyant would have her grinning with pleasure at news of Andrew proposing!
Chrissie sighed as she set about pulling the frying pan from the cupboard and shaking oven chips on a baking tray. She couldn’t leave Andrew unless she moved back home with her parents – and who wanted to go home to Mummy and Daddy at the age of twenty-seven?
This wasn’t the life she wanted, but she didn’t know how to extricate herself. Maybe this Madam Rosa could give her a few pointers. Roll on tomorrow night.