Number 11

1

From: Susan Wells

To: Val Doubleday

Subject: Re: Dilemma

14/09/2011 22:17

Dear Val

You asked me for advice. You are not going to like what you hear.

First of all — very sorry to hear that things are so tough at work. You won’t be surprised to learn that the situation up here is much the same: libraries, if not closing, then having their opening hours reduced and being told to cut down on staff. I’m sure your job is safe but I can see how hard it must be, managing on less and less money every week. It’s happening everywhere. Even at our chambers, people are being laid off. A lot of our work was for legal aid clients, and there’s not much available for legal aid these days — more people are choosing to represent themselves instead. The results are pretty disastrous as you can probably imagine.

It’s so depressing. Everything seems to be going to pot at the moment and we have another four years of this lot to put up with. Sounds like you are at the sharp end of it as well. When I think of all the time our daughters used to spend at the library, and all the wonderful things they got out of it, and now our grandkids are going to have none of that, at this rate. It’s enough to make you howl.

But come on, Val, however desperate things are … Steve?? You want to get back together with Steve? Oh, I know you didn’t say that straight out, but, reading between the lines, that’s what you’re thinking of, isn’t it?

It’s grim, sometimes, being a single middle-aged woman. I think that’s something we can both agree upon. But just remember what he did to you …

And ask Alison for her opinion, if you haven’t already!

Lots of love

Susan

*

‘Guess who I sat next to on the bus the other day?’ said Val.

‘What are these?’ said Alison, fishing inside the shopping basket and bringing out a bag of carrots.

‘They’re carrots.’

‘I can see that. But they’re not organic.’

‘So?’ said her mother, defensively. ‘They’re still carrots aren’t they? I sat next to Steve, since you’re so interested.’

Alison frowned. It was a name she never wanted to hear. ‘I thought we always got organic. They put all sorts of pesticides and chemicals into these, you know. That’s why they all look the same.’

‘Yes, well, they cost about half the price, so that’s what we’re going to be eating from now on. You’d better get used to it.’ Val snatched the carrots from her daughter, slit open the bag with her fingernail and tipped them into the fridge’s chill compartment. ‘We had a really good chat.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘He’s struggling a bit. The college made him redundant and then took him on as a freelance. So now he’s on half what he was for the same work. It’s terrible, isn’t it, how they can do that?’

‘Four bottles? Really?’ said Alison, lifting out one bottle of Pinot Grigio after another.

‘They were 50p off,’ said Val.

‘Oh I see, so by getting four of them you’ve saved even more money.’

‘Oh shut up. The thing is, I thought I might invite him round here for dinner.’

‘It just seems silly to be saving money on vegetables when you’re wasting it on wine.’

‘It’s not a waste. You drink it too, don’t you?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘So what do you think?’

‘About what?’

‘About having him round for dinner.’

‘Nothing to do with me,’ said Alison, still unpacking, and not looking up.

‘Of course it’s something to do with you. He was practically your stepfather for a while.’

Alison rounded on her. ‘He was never my stepfather. Never anything like it. OK? He was the bloke you … shacked up with, for a few months. He was the bloke you met on holiday and then changed cities to come and live with, and got dumped by as soon as life started to get difficult.’

‘That is so unfair,’ said Val, her voice already tearful.

‘Have you forgotten already, Mum? When I went in for the operation? What he was like?’

Val glared at her for a few seconds, and then said, through a half-sob: ‘I never get a bit of support from you any more, do I? Not one fucking bit.’ She grabbed one of the wine bottles from the kitchen table, and a tumbler from the shelf, and stormed off in the direction of the living room.

Alison stood still for a moment, stunned by the speed with which this quarrel had blown up. Then she shook her head and resumed her unpacking. She heard the television being switched on in the next room, and a few seconds of each different programme — local news, quiz show, sitcom — as her mother flicked between channels. She imagined her unscrewing the cap of the bottle fiercely and filling the tumbler three-quarters full with wine, drinking it like it was lemonade, which was how she always seemed to drink it these days. Three or four sips, one after the other, without taking her mouth from the rim of the glass.

After thinking about it for a minute or two, she decided that she was the one, as usual, who would have to do the apologizing. Her mother’s capacity to sulk had become pretty much inexhaustible, and Alison didn’t want to spend the entire evening in silence with her. So she went and stood in the living-room doorway and said:

‘Mum? I’m sorry.’

‘That’s OK,’ said Val, not turning around or turning the television down.

‘Did you hear me? I said I’m sorry.’

Val glanced back towards her. ‘Yes. I heard you. All right. Apology accepted. But maybe you should just think a bit more carefully before you say hurtful things.’

This was monstrously unfair, but Alison let it pass. There was no point in carrying on these fights any more. ‘I listened to your song,’ she said instead.

These words, by contrast, had an immediate effect. Val muted the television and turned round, a beseeching smile on her face.

‘You did? What did you think?’

And answering this was easy. However much her mother’s behaviour annoyed her, Alison had always enjoyed her music, never tired of listening to it, never had any trouble sharing her conviction that one day, with luck, with persistence, she would catch the public’s attention again and have another hit. And this new song, which she had listened to ten or fifteen times during the course of the day, was easily one of her best.

‘I loved it,’ she said. ‘It’s beautiful.’

‘Really? I mean, you’re not just saying that?’

‘No, Mum. I’m not just saying that. It’s brilliant. You know it is.’

‘Come and sit here.’ Val patted the place on the sofa beside her, and as soon as Alison had sat down gave her an impulsive hug. ‘What did you think of the arrangement?’

‘It’s fine. I mean, you know, it’s … getting there.’

‘Well, it’s the best I can do at home, obviously. Do you think it’s good enough to send to people?’

‘I don’t know, Mum. I’m not in the music business.’

‘Maybe if I bought some studio time. Just three or four hours’ downtime somewhere … Then I could record the vocal properly.’

‘Sure. Good idea. If you think you can afford it.’

‘Then I could send it to Cheryl.’

Alison nodded. She never knew what to say when her mother mentioned her so-called ‘agent’, who hadn’t returned one of her calls or messages for about ten years.

‘Do you like the title?’ Val asked now. ‘“Sink and Swim”? Is it catchy enough?’

‘I like everything about it.’ Finding herself caught up in another swift, clinging embrace which threatened to last for some time, Alison pushed her mother gently away and stood up. ‘OK, I’m going upstairs. I’ve got to finish writing to Rachel.’

‘That’s funny,’ said Val. ‘I just got an email from her mother.’

‘Yeah? How’s she?’

‘OK. Depressed about work, like everyone else.’

‘You should ask her what she thinks about you seeing Steve again.’

Val turned back to the television screen and unmuted it. ‘Oh, we don’t really discuss that sort of thing any more.’

The conversation was over, apparently. Leaving her mother to watch adverts for financial services she would never use and holidays she would never take, Alison went upstairs to her room, took her half-written letter out from the clutter of her desk drawer and began reading it through.

Nowadays, when it came to ways of keeping in touch, she and Rachel were spoiled for choice: they emailed and texted, and they talked on Facebook and WhatsApp. In the last few weeks, they’d even started using a newly launched app called Snapchat, which allowed them to send pictures and brief messages which were only visible for a few seconds before being wiped from the screen forever. But every so often, when one of them had something special to say to the other, only a real, old-fashioned letter would do. And what Alison had to tell Rachel now was as special and as personal as could be imagined.

So far she had written two pages and not even started to address the subject. Her last paragraph read:

So, I started at college two weeks ago (yeah, this isn’t Oxbridge, honey, we actually have a term that starts in September) and it’s looking pretty cool so far. Not sure if the course is going to be quite what I want but it’s such a relief to be hanging out with other students and teachers who just want you to do art and nothing else. The pressure to tow the line is off at last!

That was all very well, but Alison was cross with herself for not having come to the point yet. And so, nervously, she took up her pen, nibbled on the end of it for a minute or two and then wrote:

Anyway, none of that stuff matters, really. That’s not why I’m writing to you. I’m writing because there’s something you need to know, something I haven’t told any of my other friends yet. I wanted you to be the first, because … well, for all sorts of reasons. But mainly because you’re my oldest real friend and your reaction is incredibly important to me.

So. Can you guess what it is? Of course not. Why should you? (Deep breath.) I’m gay.

*

On Saturday afternoon Rachel, wanting to add a few things to her wardrobe before she left for Oxford in a couple of weeks’ time, went shopping with her mother. There was a recession on, but you would never have known it from the crowds in Leeds town centre, drifting sluggishly from shop to shop, hungry for consumer durables. Miss Selfridge and Monsoon were milling with customers. Primark was packed. H & M, Topshop, Claire’s Accessories, and Zara were too full to get into. River Island and Lush were turning people away. Rachel and her mother were both hot and exhausted by the time they got home.

As they approached the house, they saw that there was a car parked outside: a bright-red Porsche. Leaning against it, smiling smugly at them as they trudged up the street with their shopping bags, was Rachel’s brother, Nick.

‘Bloody hell,’ his mother said, ‘what are you doing here?’

‘Hello, Mum. Hello, little sis.’ He kissed them both. ‘Try to look a bit more pleased to see me.’

‘Of course we’re pleased. I just wish you’d give us a bit more warning.’

‘Flew in from Hong Kong this morning. Can I help you with those?’

‘Hong Kong?’ said Rachel, handing him the bags. ‘I thought you were in Cuba.’

‘Oh, you’re way behind.’

Nick hadn’t been home for more than a year. Now twenty-six, he looked, if anything, younger and more beautiful than ever. Essentially, Rachel’s feelings about him had not changed since the time, twelve years earlier, when they had stayed together at their grandparents’ house in Beverley, and he had played a cruel joke upon her while they visited the Minster at dusk: in other words she worshipped him, disapproved of him and, deep down, feared him a little bit. This unspoken wariness had not diminished at all since Nick had reached adulthood and teamed up with a ‘business partner’ called Toby. Their work meant that he now enjoyed a peripatetic lifestyle, which seemed to involve unspecified dealings in several different continents, hopping from one country to another at will and treating international airports the way that most people treated suburban railway stations. Whatever it was that he and Toby did for a living, it was clearly very lucrative, and beyond that Rachel felt it was probably best not to enquire.

Inside the hallway, Rachel saw that the post had finally arrived.

‘Ooh — a letter from Alison,’ she said, excitedly.

‘Never mind that now,’ said Nick, taking it from her and tossing it on to the hall table. He and Alison had never liked each other. ‘I’m only here for one night. Kindly make me the centre of attention for once.’

‘All right,’ Rachel agreed, smiling. ‘What have you come home for anyway?’

‘Your eighteenth birthday, of course. You didn’t think I’d miss that, did you?’

‘It was three months ago,’ she said, laughing.

‘I know. You probably thought the celebrations were all over. That’s what’s going to make tonight so special.’

‘I might not be free tonight,’ said Rachel, playing hard to get. ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘A surprise,’ said Nick, taking her in his arms. ‘And a pretty good one, if I do say so myself.’

It turned out that he was not exaggerating. After a few minutes’ chat with their mother, he bundled Rachel into the Porsche and soon they were driving north out of Leeds along the A61, until they reached Harewood House. By then, it was almost six o’clock.

‘What are you doing?’ Rachel asked, as Nick swung the car into the serpentine driveway. ‘This place’ll be closed now, won’t it?’

‘To most people, yes,’ he answered.

How did he manage to arrange these things? Rachel suspected that it was less to do with having money to spend, and more with his network of contacts in the most unexpected places. In any case, he had arranged for them to enjoy a private tour of the Terrace Gallery, followed by champagne on the terrace itself, and then a private dinner for two in the State Rooms.

The Terrace Gallery was especially impressive, with two new pieces by Antony Gormley on display in addition to the permanent collection. Rachel could not help thinking how much Alison would have enjoyed this privileged view. She took a picture of one of the sculptures on her phone and, while she and Nick were waiting for their champagne to be served on the terrace, sent it to Alison via Snapchat.

Soon afterwards a picture of Alison’s bedroom in Yardley popped up.

Hi Rache, did you get my letter?

The words were only on the screen for ten seconds or so, before dissolving into nothingness. By way of reply, Rachel took a quick picture of the parkland laid out in front of them, bathed in evening sunlight, and then wrote with her forefinger on the screen:

Yes, will write back soon.

Alison replied:

That looks good! Where are you?

Rachel took a picture of the house itself, and wrote:

With my brother. We’re doing the nicest thing tonight!

There was a longish pause before Alison’s reply came through. It said simply:

W T F??

Had she misunderstood, somehow? Rachel took another picture, this time with the Terrace Gallery itself in the background, and wrote:

Right up your street I would have thought.

There was no reply from Alison after this, but Rachel didn’t think anything of it. A waiter approached them from the main house to announce that their table for dinner was ready.

The next day, Rachel read Alison’s letter, and was profoundly moved by it. She replied at once. She wrote a heartfelt message of support, saying that Alison was not to feel shy, let alone ashamed, of what she had realized about her own identity. She promised that they would always be friends, whatever happened. She hoped that it would not be long before they saw each other again, and could discuss these things face to face.

She was surprised, at first, not to receive a reply. She put it down to the fact that Alison had just started college and must be busy. Then she, too, had the beginning of her first term at Oxford to think about, but although that distracted her, she was still puzzled to have heard nothing at all. She called Alison on the phone and texted her, posted messages on her Facebook timeline, but never got any response. She began to wonder if there had been something in the letter which had offended her. Had she not sounded supportive enough? Had she made Alison’s announcement sound more like a problem than a cause for celebration? As the weeks went by, and turned into months, her puzzlement dwindled, receded but never quite went away. It mutated, eventually, into a low-level hum of resentment. She had done the right thing, after all. She had responded just as a good friend should. She deserved something better than silence.

*

The Number 11 bus route, which follows the whole of Birmingham’s outer circle, makes a complete circuit of the city in about two and a half hours. Most passengers stay on it for only a fraction of that time. Alison and Selena, new students together and already new friends, were sitting on the lower deck of the 11A, the anti-clockwise version, heading from Bournville in the direction of Hall Green. They were on their way home from college, having dozed through a ninety-minute lecture on ‘Mapping the Historiography of the Para-Architectural Space’, which had failed to catch their imaginations. Well, never mind. They couldn’t expect everything on this course to be brilliant.

It was late September, and a low sun was still washing the city in pale golden light, glinting off the windscreens of cars and the panes of allotment greenhouses. Alison glanced at her phone to see what time it was, as the bus shuddered to a halt at a pedestrian crossing. Almost six thirty. This was proving to be a slow journey.

‘You going straight home now, then?’ Selena asked.

‘No. I’m meeting my mum for a drink. With her new boyfriend. Well, she calls him “new”. He’s her old boyfriend, in fact. But he seems to have popped up on the scene again.’

‘How do you feel about that?’

‘Whatever makes her happy, I suppose,’ said Alison, without much conviction. Then: ‘Your folks are still together, right?’

‘Yeah.’ Selena laughed, and said: ‘I don’t know why, sometimes, but they’ve stuck it out. For the sake of us kids, I think, as much as anything else. Good on them. I’ve seen most of my friends having to deal with their parents splitting up. I know how tough it is. You an only child?’

Alison nodded.

‘That’s even worse, isn’t it? So it’s just you and your mum at home, and I bet half the time it’s you looking after her, not the other way round.’

‘Yeah, there’s all of that. Plus, you know, it just gets so fucking lonely a lot of the time. Sitting at the kitchen table, having dinner together, just the two of us. If you don’t put the radio on or something you can hear the clock ticking on the wall.’

Selena’s wide, hazel eyes were full of sympathy: ‘Look, any time you want to come round and have a meal at our place … Just say the word. There’s five of us and it gets pretty loud and, you know, we have a good time. It might take you out of things.’

Returning Selena’s gaze, Alison took a long breath and said, in a tone of voice suddenly nervous and confiding: ‘Look, Selena, we only met a couple of weeks ago, but there’s something I want you to know about me. Something you really have to know, actually.’

Selena was startled by the change in her manner. She waited for some passengers to jostle past them on their way to the exit door, then said: ‘OK. What is it?’

Saying nothing, her eyes still locked into Selena’s, Alison took hold of her friend’s hand with a gentle grip. She lifted it, and now, moving it slowly, unobtrusively, so as not to attract the attention of the other passengers, she laid it on her own left thigh, just above the knee. She squeezed Selena’s hand, so that Selena herself was encouraged — even compelled — to respond by giving Alison’s thigh a reciprocal, questioning squeeze.

Selena’s eyes, not leaving Alison’s for a moment, flickered with surprise. There was a long silence between them: a silence charged with confusion and uncertainty. Selena’s hand did not leave her friend’s thigh: in fact it was still being held in place there. Gradually, her lips widened into a smile; the smile became broader, revealing her teeth; and at last, unable to contain her feelings any longer, she burst into laughter.

‘What the fuck!’ she said, and Alison started laughing as well.

‘What the fucking fuck!’ Selena repeated, and neither of them seemed to mind now that some of the passengers were turning to look at them. ‘Have you got a false leg?’

‘Yes!’ said Alison, barely able to get the word out, as she was by now doubled up with laughter herself. ‘Oh my God, the way you looked just then!’

‘My God, I didn’t know what you were doing! And now this … It’s like … What is it like? What’s it made of? It’s like plastic.’

‘Of course it’s plastic. They don’t make them out of wood any more, you know. I’m not bloody Long John Silver.’

‘But … what happened? How long have you had it?’

The bus staggered its way through Kings Heath and along Swanshurst Lane as Alison told her the story. Passengers came and went, the bus changed drivers at Acocks Green, but the two students were wrapped up in each other, and took no notice.

‘When I was ten,’ said Alison, ‘I kept getting these pains in my leg for no reason. Really bad pains that wouldn’t go away. We moved to Birmingham round about then so I was going in for hundreds of tests at the Queen Elizabeth and in the end they diagnosed me with this very rare thing called Ewing’s sarcoma, which is a really aggressive kind of cancer. I was on chemotherapy for months but in the end that wasn’t enough and they told me they were going to have to cut the whole thing off.’

‘Shit, that’s terrible.’

‘Well, the alternative was kind of worse, wasn’t it? Here I am, after all. Alive and kicking.’

Selena couldn’t work out at first whether this was a joke or not. When Alison’s smile made it clear that it was, she gave a relieved laugh of her own.

‘Do you want to see it?’ Alison asked now. ‘It’s very realistic.’

She rolled the left leg of her jeans almost up to the knee to expose a section of prosthesis which did indeed have the convincing look of flesh and bone.

‘The knee doesn’t look quite so good — I’ll show you that later,’ said Alison, rolling her trouser leg down again, ‘but otherwise it’s all right, isn’t it? They even matched my skin colour. When they’re ready to make the leg they give you a book of samples and you have to flick through all the different skin tones, just like you were choosing a carpet or something.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘No. I could have had one white leg, if I’d wanted to. How cool would that have been? I could have been a living example of ethnic diversity.’

Alison explained that the cancer had been so aggressive that the surgeons had had to perform a transfemoral amputation, above the knee. This meant that her left leg was lacking all the motor power of the knee joint — one of the strongest joints in the human body — so she could still only take stairs, for instance, step by step, one stair at a time. Nonetheless, on level surfaces, where there were not too many people around to impede her progress and get in her way, she was able to walk with perfect confidence.

‘How long did it take,’ Selena asked, ‘before it started to feel … you know, natural?’

‘Oh, it never feels natural,’ said Alison. ‘Never has, never will. But learning to feel — I don’t know — comfortable with it didn’t take too long. I worked with a physical therapist: in the hospital at first, and then after that she started coming to our house. That went on for a few months. Stressful time for everyone, very stressful. This guy I was telling you about — Steve — my mother’s boyfriend, he was around at this time. In fact that was when he showed his true colours.’

‘Was he not very supportive, you mean?’

‘Not really. He started shagging the physical therapist.’

After a second or two they both started laughing again at that, it sounded so ridiculous. In any case it was easier, for Alison, to laugh about it than to remember the real agony of that time, when all her own hopes had seemed to lie shattered around her, and in the face of Steve’s betrayal her mother turned into a wreck who drank herself to sleep most nights and seemed to age ten years in as many months. She really, really didn’t feel like seeing him again tonight.

‘Hey, look,’ she said to Selena, quietly now, ‘you couldn’t come with me to the pub tonight, could you? Safety in numbers, and all that. Only it’ll be the first time I’ve seen him in about seven years and I could do with having a friend there, to stop me doing something stupid.’

*

Outside The Spread Eagle, Alison laid a warning hand on Selena’s arm and said: ‘She’s white, by the way.’

‘Who?’

‘My mum.’

‘So?’

‘Some people are surprised, that’s all.’

‘I think I can handle it. As long as she doesn’t have two heads or something.’

‘You know what I mean. I just thought you’d probably be expecting …’

‘Alison — stay cool. Everything’s cool. You need to calm down a bit.’

‘I know. OK.’

Alison nodded her head, and took a few deep breaths, composing herself, trying to find her centre of gravity. She held out her hands, palms downwards, and pushed down as if on a pair of invisible parallel bars.

‘Right,’ she said, after a few moments of this. ‘I’m ready.’

They went inside.

Steve seemed to have lost most of his hair since Alison had seen him last, but apart from that, he looked very much the same. He kissed her on the cheek and gave her a big hug and she had little option but to put up with both of these things. When he went to the bar to get their drinks she could not help noticing how her mother’s eyes followed him appraisingly, longingly: and yet she was probably the only person in the pub who would have given this balding, potbellied figure a second glance. Alison did her best not to betray her feelings but inside she was letting out a long, deep sigh of resignation. It was going to happen all over again. Life was all too predictable sometimes.

Another example of this sad truth presented itself just a few minutes later. Her mother went to say something to the girl behind the bar. She was pointing at the little shelf of CDs that were kept there to use as background music, and Alison knew exactly what was coming next. Val’s sole top-twenty hit (from twelve years ago) was included on any number of compilation CDs and, sure enough, before long she had persuaded the girl to slot one into the CD player and search forward for the relevant track. Over the pub’s PA system the familiar keyboard riff soon blasted out, broken up by an offbeat drum pattern, providing an angular but catchy backdrop to Val’s strong, plangent melody, with her three fellow bandmembers oohing and aahing behind her in competent close harmony.

With an apologetic but proud smile at her companions, Val wandered back over to their table. Just in time to hear Selena say:

‘Ooh, I love this song.’

‘Really?’ Her surprise was obvious. ‘You know it?’

‘It’s one of the first things I can remember hearing. My mum used to have it on in the house all the time.’

‘I wrote it,’ said Val, and watched thirstily as a respectful amazement transformed Selena’s face.

‘You did? You wrote this?’

‘Yeah. That’s me singing. I’m that Val Doubleday.’

Selena didn’t actually recognize the name; it was the name of the band that was remembered by those who remembered the song at all. All the same, she was impressed; more impressed than even Val could reasonably have hoped for.

‘You sang this on Top of the Pops, yeah? I remember the little dance routine.’

‘Oh, God … We practised that for days.’ She set off down a well-worn path of reminiscence, recalling how Louisa, the fourth, blondest and prettiest member of the group, had developed a mental block about their simple dance moves and they’d had to spend the best part of a week in a London dance studio with an increasingly exasperated choreographer. Alison had heard the story many times before, and recognized by now that it took the form of a classic humblebrag: the underlying message being that the four of them may have been ditzy and naive but at the same time, they had been serious players, with the resources of a powerful record company behind them. It was dull having to listen to all of this again, but still, it gave her mother pleasure to tell the story, so she listened with a patient smile on her face and didn’t interrupt.

‘So what are you doing now?’ Selena wanted to know. ‘Are the four of you still together?’

Val laughed. ‘No. We split up ages ago. Straight after we did our first album.’

‘But you’re still in the music business, right?’

‘Of course. I can’t stop writing and singing. It’s in my DNA.’

‘Val’s an incredibly creative person,’ Steve said, sliding a proprietorial arm around her shoulders.

‘And guess what?’ said Val, looking pointedly at her daughter, whose scepticism remained unspoken but, to everyone around the table, palpable. ‘Cheryl emailed me today about the new song.’

‘Really? That’s great. What does she think?’

‘She hasn’t had a chance to listen to it yet. But she said she was really looking forward to it.’

‘Oh, OK. Wow. Well, that’s a real breakthrough …’

The sarcasm was cruder and more bitter than she had intended. Val looked down, unable to meet her daughter’s gaze, and took three or four rapid sips from her gin and tonic.

‘Your mother doesn’t need that kind of cynicism right now,’ Steve said.

Alison’s eyes lit up angrily. ‘Why does it matter to you?’

‘Because Steve cares about me and my career,’ said Val. ‘He’s going to get me some downtime in the studio at college, so I can do a better version. You know — he’s doing something constructive. Something helpful.’

‘About that, love,’ he said, leaning in closer to her. ‘I’ve been having a word with Ricky, the engineer, and he reckons that Tuesday evenings would be the best. If you could come in after nine …’

Alison only half listened to the rest of their conversation. She could tell that Selena was feeling restless and embarrassed: maybe it had been a selfish idea to bring her here, to thrust her into the middle of this awkward family situation. It angered her, too, to see that Steve was already well on his way to being reinstalled as her mother’s confidant. Soon Val had taken out a letter she had been given at work that day — something about a reduction in her working hours — and was discussing it with him.

‘The thing is,’ she was saying, ‘I can’t support the two of us on anything less than I get at the moment. No way. It’s just not possible. Especially not with the winter coming up, and fuel bills …’

‘Don’t worry, babes,’ he said — the arm never leaving her shoulders, staking its claim to ownership ever more tightly — ‘we’ll sort something out. Just give me time to think about it.’

Alison’s glass was empty. So was Selena’s. She didn’t suggest buying another round.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk you to the bus stop.’

Selena rose to her feet with every appearance of relief.

As they walked along Warwick Road, bathed in the evening sky’s final sunset glow, the smell of chips and kebabs and jerk chicken steaming out from the fast-food outlets, Alison took Selena’s arm and said:

‘Sorry. That was even more horrible than I was expecting.’

‘That’s OK. But you should have told me you had a famous mum. That’s just awesome.’

‘Well, she’s not famous any more, not by any stretch of the imagination. But she does write good songs still. I try to … hold on to that.’

‘What were she and Steve talking about just now?’ Selena asked. ‘When she was showing him that letter?’

‘Something to do with her work. She works in the library in Harborne.’

‘So that’s what she is now, is it? A librarian?’

They had reached Selena’s bus stop. They could see the bus in the distance, one set of traffic lights away.

‘At the moment, yeah,’ said Alison. ‘But even that’s not looking good. They’re cutting her hours back. Libraries aren’t getting the money any more.’

‘I thought they were building a big new one in town. Spending millions on it.’

‘True, but … Well, I don’t know. Don’t ask me how these things work.’

She spoke these words unthinkingly, formulaically, as the bus rumbled towards them and her conscious mind dissolved into panic at the thought of what form, exactly, her farewell to Selena should take. A hug, a friendly hand on the arm, a kiss on the cheek? In the event, it was a clumsy mash-up of all these things. The hug lasted longer than either of them had been expecting, and involved a certain amount of affectionate back-rubbing, and they touched cheeks rather than kissing; but in the process Alison’s lips brushed against Selena’s ear, and the memory of its texture stayed with her for the rest of that evening, along with her delicate, animal scent. As she walked home, she continued to savour them both, and realized that she was singing to herself, over and over, the chorus of her mother’s new song:

Still I try to do my best, but I need your breath

As the moonshine controls the water,

I will sink and swim.

*

Perry Barr — Handsworth — Winson Green — Bearwood — Harborne — Selly Oak — Cotteridge — Kings Heath — Hall Green — Acocks Green — Yardley — Stechford — Fox & Goose — Erdington — Witton — Perry Barr.

The weeks went by, the days grew shorter and colder, until one day, in early November, a turning point came.

Val’s hours had been reduced from four days to three mornings a week.

Her salary was cut in half and she was having to spend more time at home. The house was freezing. She started to worry about her next heating bill. And it was boring, sitting at home by herself all afternoon, watching daytime TV. Boring and lonely.

One Wednesday lunchtime she was coming home from the library on the Number 11 bus. She got on in Harborne and planned to get off close to her home in Yardley, a journey of some twenty-five minutes. But as she approached her stop, she changed her mind. The bus was warm; her house was cold. The bus was full of people; her house was empty. The view from her seat on the bus was ever-changing; the views from her house were monotonous. Suddenly she felt no inclination at all to get up from her comfortable seat and step out into the cold.

It was 1.15. A complete circuit of the city would bring her back to this same spot at 3.45. So that was what she did, and that was what she soon got into the habit of doing every day. Every working day, at first, but then, before long, she found that she was doing it on Tuesdays and Thursdays as well. Sometimes clockwise, sometimes anti-clockwise. Two and a half hours in which nothing was required of her, except to sit still, to watch the comings and goings of the other passengers, and to allow her thoughts to drift in spiralling patterns which mirrored the bus’s slow, circular progress.

Yardley — Stechford — Fox & Goose —

Why was her house so cold? Because she couldn’t afford to keep the radiators on all day. And even when they were on, she didn’t turn them up to 5 any more, the way she used to when winter came. Nowadays she never turned them higher than 2. Why not? Because the library couldn’t afford to pay her properly. Because the government had drastically reduced its budget for libraries. Because we were now all living — apparently — in an age of ‘austerity’.

— Fox & Goose — Erdington — Witton — Perry Barr — Handsworth —

This new buzzword — austerity — had only entered common currency about a year ago. What did it mean? In 2008 there had been a global financial crisis and some of the world’s largest banks had been on the point of collapse. The people had bailed them out and now, it seemed, in order to pay for this, public services would have to be slashed and benefits would have to be cut. But it was worth it because we had been living beyond our means and we were ‘all in this together’.

— Handsworth — Winson Green — Bearwood —

And this, essentially, was why Val was now being careful never to turn her radiators up higher than 2 and was choosing to ride round and round the outer circle on the Number 11 bus rather than go home to her chilly living room. But at the same time, she couldn’t help thinking about the traders and fund managers whose activities had brought the banks to the brink of collapse: were many of them, she wondered, being careful to keep their radiators turned down to 2? It didn’t seem very likely.

— Bearwood — Harborne — Selly Oak —

The thought made her angry and depressed. The fact that she was angry and depressed made her feel guilty. It couldn’t be much fun for Alison, living with a mother who was angry and depressed all the time. What could she do to stop herself from feeling angry and depressed?

— Selly Oak — Cotteridge — Kings Heath —

Last night she had watched a TV panel show where a popular comedian, Mickey Parr, had gone off on a satirical riff about bankers still getting bonuses even after the banks had had to be bailed out by the government, and the studio audience had been in stitches. They all seemed to think the situation was hilarious. Val had sat on the sofa with her glass of Pinot Grigio and watched the routine through a puzzled frown. Why did people think it was funny? Why did it not make them angry and depressed?

— Kings Heath — Hall Green — Acocks Green — Yardley

She was still pondering that one as the bus reached her stop at last, after a longer than usual journey of two hours and forty minutes. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. Before getting off she hesitated very briefly, wondering if she should stay on for another circuit, but even Val realized that would be a step too far. So she disembarked and went straight to the supermarket, to try and find something different (but cheap) that she and Alison could have for dinner. It was on the short walk home from there that her mobile rang, heralding the call from Cheryl that would transform her life.

*

Alison had been to the pub with Selena again, and was late home. It was after 9.30 when she let herself in. She went into the kitchen and found that her mother’s shopping was still sitting unpacked on the kitchen table. From the living room she could hear the sound of the television.

She picked out the first thing she could find in the shopping bag. It was a small plastic packet, on the front of which were the words ‘HAPPEE CHICKEN BITES’, accompanied by a cartoon picture of a purple chicken with a cheeky smile on its face, biting its own leg off. Alison turned the packet over and read the small print at the bottom. ‘Manufactured by Sunbeam Foods’, it said. ‘Part of the Brunwin Group’.

She took the packet into the living room. ‘What is this, Mum? Are you taking the piss or something?’

Val jumped to her feet. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to contact you for hours.’

‘Sorry, my phone battery ran out.’ She was almost having to shout over the sound of the television, it was turned up so loud. ‘Can you mute that? Why are you watching that shit anyway?’

Val was watching a famous reality show, in which a dozen celebrities were flown off to the Australian jungle and had to survive there for two weeks, while the viewing public voted them off the programme one by one. It wasn’t the kind of show she would have bothered with in the past, but nowadays it seemed she would watch almost anything.

‘Why am I watching it?’ Val turned and pointed at the screen. Her face was flushed, her pointing finger was shaking. ‘You want to know why I’m watching it? I’m watching it because I’m going to be on it.’

Her eyes were wide with an excitement she was waiting for Alison to reciprocate. But the words she had just spoken made no sense to her daughter. Alison recognized them all, individually, but her brain could not put them together into a meaningful sentence.

‘What are you talking about?’ was all she could say.

‘Cheryl rang up this afternoon. I thought it might be about the song, but … anyway, this is nearly as good. They want me to go on the show. This show.’

After opening and closing her mouth ineffectually a few more times, Alison managed to ask: ‘When?’

‘The day after tomorrow,’ said Val, and laughed wildly. ‘I know. It’s amazing, isn’t it? They want to bring someone new in halfway through the series and the person they’d booked has dropped out. So they called Cheryl and said they were desperate to find someone and she suggested me.’

‘Desperate?’

‘Well … no, that wasn’t the word. Anxious, or something. It might have been desperate. I don’t know. Anyway, that’s not the point. In three days’ time, I’m going to be in that camp. With those people.’

Alison stared at her mother, utterly nonplussed. In fact neither of them could speak, now: but the moment of release, when it finally came, was euphoric. It wasn’t long before they found themselves shrieking with excitement, and dancing together around the room until Val lost her balance, fell heavily against her daughter’s artificial leg and they collapsed on to the sofa in a heap, tears of joy running down their faces.

2

Val sat in the middle of her hammock, trying to get used to its wobble, trying to keep her balance. She looked around her at the camp. She didn’t know what time it was: mid-afternoon, maybe. It was difficult to keep track, since none of them were allowed to wear watches. Most of her campmates were asleep, or trying to sleep at least. There was nothing much else to do in this heat. Edith, the elderly soap star, was flat on her back, one arm dangling over the edge of her hammock, snoring gently. Roger, the celebrity TV historian, was curled into a foetal position with his back to her, a river of sweat visible through his shorts at the cleft of his buttocks. Pete, the genial reality TV star from Manchester, had one hand on his crotch and the other behind his head. Only Danielle, the endlessly lovely, the beautiful Danielle, seemed to be keeping her composure and her dignity. She lay on her back, perfectly still, her hands folded on her belly, breathing evenly, the only traces of sweat being a few beads on the upper slopes of her breasts which did nothing but add to her carefully tousled allure. Her tan was smooth and even and she seemed to have applied concealer to the two or three mosquito bites on her face and neck, despite the nominal ban on make-up in the camp. She had a way of getting around these things.

For her own part, Val felt like shit, and knew that she probably looked it as well. Before arriving here she had resolved always to look her best for the cameras, but had already given up on that idea. Really, would anyone care what she looked like? The important thing — as Alison had said — was to ‘be yourself, because then everyone will like you’. That, and to make sure that she got to sing ‘Sink and Swim’ to the show’s ten million viewers at some point. Although the last thing she felt like doing, at this moment, was bursting into song.

It wasn’t that she was jetlagged, exactly. The worst of the jetlag, she was told, would kick in after the journey back to England. This was simply a profound sense of disorientation. Five days ago she had been at home in Yardley, a place she had not left — apart from a few days’ holiday here and there, always with Alison, always within the British Isles — for several years. But an incredible amount had happened in those last five days. So much so that now, already, she could hardly remember the events in sequence. There had been …

… the mad dash down to London for two emergency meetings. The first had been at the offices of the production company, Stercus Television. A young, brittle production assistant called Suzanne had met her at reception and led her upstairs into the Hilary Winshaw suite, named after the legendary executive who had joined the company in the early 1990s and transformed its fortunes by taking it in its present cost-efficient, populist direction, with 90 per cent of its output in the field of reality shows. Here she was briefed on her travel arrangements, given contracts to sign and told that Suzanne would be flying out to Australia with her and would not leave her side until the helicopter flight into the jungle itself. The second had been in the consulting rooms of a Harley Street doctor. He gave her a quick examination, and an even quicker psychiatric assessment. ‘You did tell them,’ Alison had asked when she got home that evening, ‘that you’re terrified of insects?’ One of the questions they had put to her, it was true, was whether she suffered from any phobias, but Val had said no, fearing that otherwise she would not be allowed to take part. ‘Well, that was bloody stupid,’ Alison had said. ‘What are you going to do when they start getting you to eat cockroaches?’ ‘Why would they do that?’ Val had asked, to which Alison said, ‘Have you ever seen this bloody programme, before last night?’, leading to another tremendous row which went stratospheric when her mother had informed her that Stercus were paying for one companion to fly out to Australia with her, and she was taking not Alison but Steve …

… the taxi drive to Heathrow the next morning. Steve clasping her hand as she sat in the back seat, shaking with nervousness and expectation, the beige conurbations of Banbury, Bicester, High Wycombe, Hemel Hempstead swirling past on their way down the M40 …

… the sheer, unimaginable joy of flying first class, the pamperedness of it, the dry marzipan richness of the free champagne, the quantity and variety of the free food, the things they had never tasted before, the caviar, the foie gras, the carpaccio of bluefin tuna, the fillet of Kobe steak, the thin ribbons of pasta in truffle sauce, and finally the thirty-year-old single malt which had sent them into a deep, restful sleep, the depth and restfulness of this sleep being made possible by the welcoming embrace of the fold-down beds, and by the soothing ministrations of the cabin crew, who did pretty much everything but massage their toes, stroke their hair and sing them lullabies …

… the dazzling whiteness of the light as soon as they stepped off the plane at Brisbane, a light they had not experienced, had not even been able to imagine, while living in Birmingham, and then the excitement of having a cluster of young, enthusiastic people from the production company waiting for them in the arrivals hall, and a couple of dozen journalists and paparazzi. The thrill of being recognized again, of no longer feeling invisible …

… the wonderful, trashy opulence of the beachside hotel outside Brisbane, to which they were taken by limo. The mindboggling acreage of bedroom, sitting room and bathroom — altogether about twice the size of Val’s house in Yardley — all done out with magnificent vulgarity …

… a vulgarity which was carried over to the poolside restaurant where they had their first dinner in this amazing new continent and met some of their fellow guests: Mr and Mrs Perry, the parents of Danielle, the gorgeous young glamour model who was favourite to win the competition this series; Mary Walker, the mother of Pete Walker, the reality TV star, and her younger sister Jacqui. ‘So Pete and Danielle were allowed to bring two people over with them, were they?’ Val had asked Suzanne, and Suzanne had nodded but offered no explanation, giving Val her first intimation that perhaps there was a hierarchy among the contestants on this show, and she was not going to be at the top of it. But she had brushed this mildly troubling thought aside, and instead found herself enjoying the company of these people, enjoying the feeling of being part of a chosen few, an elite, transplanted from mundanity into paradise, and she soon warmed to Mary and Jacqui, who remembered her hit single and agreed with her that this show was just what she needed to reboot her career, and she didn’t warm to Danielle’s parents quite so much, in fact she and Steve agreed afterwards that they were rather strange, especially when Val ordered a Caesar salad and when it arrived Mrs Perry burst into tears, because apparently Caesar had been the name of their boxer dog, and he had died just a couple of days before they’d flown out to Australia, after twelve years of living with them, and that was a bit weird, the way a salad made her burst into tears, but anyway, they both sympathized, and put it down to the champagne, of which they had all drunk about a bottle and a half each by the time they made it upstairs to bed …

… the helicopter ride the next day, which had been the real start of the adventure. She had kissed Steve goodbye and said — for the first time in seven years or so — ‘Love you’ (which he had answered by hugging her and whispering ‘Good luck, babes’). Before she had climbed into the helicopter, a sound engineer had clipped a microphone to the lapel of her jungle outfit and Val was told that anything she said from this point onwards would be recorded and could potentially be broadcast. She tried not to swear, or to say anything too inane, or to scream too loudly as they took off. She had never been in one of these things before and it was, at first, predictably terrifying. But the journey, which she had imagined would take at least an hour, plunging ever deeper into impenetrable rain forest, turned out to be quite short — only ten minutes or so — because the camp was really only a few miles from the hotel, in what looked from the air like rather a tame stretch of national park. The pilot had made a lot of unnecessary swoops and dives, to get her screaming and to make their arrival look more dramatic, but then she was deposited safely in the middle of the forest and there was a guide on hand to walk her towards the camp …

… her entry into the camp. What had she been expecting? Whoops of recognition? Hardly. But something more, certainly, than the palpable sense of indifference when she walked into the clearing. ‘Hi everybody!’ she had cooed, embarrassed to hear how needy her own voice sounded already. It took about ten minutes to explain to everybody who she was, and then it transpired that only two of her campmates — the oldest two, as it happened — remembered her, her hit record or her fleeting appearances on Top of the Pops. Apparently there had been a rumour going around that the star of a hit sitcom from the 1990s was coming to join the camp, and they were all a bit deflated to discover that this wasn’t the case. (Val guessed that this was the person she had been called in to replace, although she had been told to keep quiet on that subject.) After that it seemed there was nothing much she was expected to do except settle in. The prevailing atmosphere among the celebrities, she noticed, was one of intense boredom. Everyone seemed to be suffering from exhaustion, brought on by a combination of heat, humidity and hunger. All that anyone could think of, and talk about, was the evening meal, which consisted of ungenerous portions of unflavoured rice and beans: in fact tonight’s portion would be especially small, as Edith, the elderly soap star, had failed dismally at today’s ‘trial’. The purpose of these trials was to entertain the public by torturing and humiliating the celebrities, making them perform various revolting tasks in order to obtain food for their campmates: tasks which usually involved being put into confined spaces with large numbers of insects, snakes or other jungle creatures which presumably found the experience just as distressing as the human participants.

Val had not thought too much about what would happen if she was made to perform one of these trials herself. The choice of celebrity was down to the viewing public, who usually picked on the most obnoxious and made him, or her, go through the ordeal day after day. Since she was determined to be cheerful, likeable and friendly to everyone, no matter what the circumstances, she was confident that it wouldn’t happen to her. And now, in fact, was the perfect opportunity to put this resolve into practice: for Danielle had just glanced over towards her and offered her a weak smile and a tiny wave of the hand, a tentative but unmistakable invitation to conversation. With a slow, effortful heave, pushing against the humid air as if it was a cushion of dampness pressing down upon her, Val rose from her hammock and wandered over to chat to the exquisite young model. She was keenly aware, as she did so, of how flawless Danielle’s beauty was, how ragged and dowdy she herself must appear by comparison. And the age difference between them was such that she could easily have been the girl’s mother. Perhaps that, then, should be the keynote of their relationship: her attitude towards her should be motherly. She should try to be friendly, caring and protective, offering advice and wisdom as well as companionship. Val knew that she must already have made a good impression on the viewing public. This approach could only make them like her even more.

*

Back in Yardley, Alison sat at the kitchen table with a pile of newspapers in front of her, skimming through the early press coverage of her mother’s arrival in the camp.

SHE’S A NONENTITY — GET HER OUT OF THERE was a typical headline.

‘As the latest “celebrity” makes her underwhelming entry into the jungle camp,’ the article began, ‘viewers up and down the country are asking the same question: Who the hell is Val Doubleday?’

AREN’T THESE PEOPLE SUPPOSED TO BE FAMOUS? another headline asked.

REVEALED, another one boasted: JUNGLE ‘CELEBRITY’ IS ACTUALLY PART-TIME LIBRARIAN.

‘In its heyday,’ Alison read, ‘contestants on this show used to fall into two types: has-beens and wannabes.

‘But now ageing single mother Val Doubleday (or Crabs as she is already known to the production team) represents a whole new category: never-was-in-the-first-place.’

Alison winced for the first time. ‘Crabs’, her mother had once told her in a confiding moment, used to be her nickname at school: a cruel playground twist on the initials V. D. It was alarming to learn that it had been revived by people working for this programme, and had leaked to the newspapers already. This felt ominous, somehow.

Alison pushed the papers aside and turned to her laptop. Before her mother had left for Australia, the two of them had set up a Twitter account for her. They had discussed whether to use a recent photograph or one from Val’s singing days, and had finally compromised by combining an up-to-date profile picture with a screengrab of her old Top of the Pops appearance, stretching across the top of the page as a banner photo. It all looked very smart and professional. For the first day or two the account had attracted no attention at all, but as soon as the first news of Val’s participation was published a trickle of followers appeared, and now the number had swelled to 4,752. Alison was keeping the notifications page permanently open, and she now noticed that there had been 319 new messages. Excitedly, she began to scroll through them.

The first one said:

Who the fuck are you bitch?

Followed by:

Never heard of you

U r well ugly

*Yawn* Bored with her already

I remember ur song it was shite

Vote her off! The campaign starts here #getridofVal

Your face makes me ill

U r well old

Ugh what a witch

Ha ha cunt

And so on, for tweet after tweet. After she had looked through the first one hundred messages or so, Alison decided it was time she started blocking most of the posters. It took a couple of hours to block all of the most offensive ones, not least because new tweets started appearing almost as fast as she could block them. At the end of it she felt somehow soiled, as if she had spent the morning scrubbing out a toilet without wearing rubber gloves. And still the new messages continued to appear. She was fighting a losing battle. For the time being she gave up, and went into college to check out the afternoon lectures.

A sense of unreality, of weightlessness, persisted for the rest of the day. Riding home that evening on the Number 11 bus, Alison struggled to understand that her mother was ten thousand miles away, on the other side of the world, probably asleep beneath an Australian sky in the company of a dozen people she had never met before. Her life for the last few years had been so circumscribed: how on earth would she be coping? The last piece of news she’d heard had been a text from Steve, saying ‘Just seen Val whisked off by helicopter, jungle-bound. That’s it for a few days then!’ To which she had not replied. So now she had only her own imagination to rely upon, and it was not equal to the task. Perhaps it would be best to put the whole thing out of her mind, if possible, until nine o’clock that evening, when the edited highlights of Val’s first day in the camp would go out on national television.

By five to nine she was ready on the sofa, with a big plate of brown rice and stir-fried vegetables, waiting for the programme to start. The sound on the television was muted for the adverts and it was striking how silent the house seemed, how empty, without even her mother’s subdued, untalkative presence. Alison missed her, more than she would ever have imagined possible. Would watching her on TV be the next best thing?

Sixty minutes later, she was not sure what she had just seen. Very little of her mother, that was for sure: her total contribution to the programme, including the footage of her arrival in camp, could not have amounted to more than two or three minutes. The moment when she turned up and called out ‘Hi everybody!’ seemed especially lame: the cameras lingered heartlessly on the scene for what seemed like forever, revelling in the silence that followed her greeting, zooming in to pick up the eagerness in her eyes and then, seconds later, the disappointment that clouded them. She looked so small and old, Alison thought. How could she not have noticed that before? And had she always walked with that half-stoop? Her posture was terrible. After that, in any case, she more or less disappeared from the programme, most of which was devoted to prolonged shots of Danielle the glamour model and Pete the reality star showering in their swimwear. Val made only one more appearance. She was seen chatting to Danielle on her hammock in the afternoon, while the other campmates slept.

VAL: … I thought there might be a bit more of a fuss when I arrived, that’s all.

DANIELLE: I think everyone’s just a bit tired, you know? Don’t worry about it.

VAL: For me, it was a bit of an anti-climax, after the helicopter and everything.

DANIELLE: A bit of a damp squid, yeah …

VAL: (after a beat) Squib, you mean.

DANIELLE: What?

VAL: That’s the expression — ‘damp squib’.

DANIELLE: Oh, I see. So you’re correcting me?

VAL: Well, a lot of people get it wrong.

DANIELLE: I thought it was ‘squid’ because, you know, squids live underwater, so they’re probably quite damp.

VAL: Yes, you’d think so. But it’s actually squib.

DANIELLE: Oh. OK. (a beat) Well, thanks for putting me right about that.

When the programme was over, Alison sat for a while on the sofa, staring at the blank TV screen. Watching the show had been one of the strangest experiences of her life. She knew her mother intimately: better — far better — than she knew anyone else in the world. And the woman on the television had recognizably been her mother. And yet, in the very occasional glimpses of her which the programme had afforded, it had also been like watching a stranger. She had seen her as the cameras had seen her, and as the people editing the show had seen her, and these perspectives, she thought, were unforgiving. They were unfiltered by love.

As for Twitter, there was not much love for Val to be found on there this evening.

Omg she is so dull

Get this woman off my fucking tv screen

Join the campaign #getridofVal

Fucksake what a bitch

How many blowjobs did you have to give to get on this show

Grammar nazi!

Lay off Danielle

Correcting Danielle who the fuck do you think you are

How dare you speak like that to Danielle you ugly old sow

Anvil faced mare #getridofVal

Get back to your library and leave Danielle alone #teamDanielle

Fuck off back to ur libary

Squid squib who gives a fuck apart from some dried-up librarian

Fucking bitch the viewers are going to make you suffer for that

Again, Alison spent an hour or two blocking the most offensive people. Again, she felt as impotent as Canute trying to hold back the tide. Her mother’s account had 6,111 followers now, she noticed. Not bad, except that Pete’s had 314,566, and Danielle’s was fast approaching one million.

The odds, she couldn’t help feeling, were stacking up against her.

*

Beneath a dark-blue, starry sky, Val sat in the shadow of a eucalyptus tree, alone. Her hands were clasped tightly around her knees, and her knees were pulled up to her chin. In this position, curled into a ball, she rocked backwards and forwards, eyes closed, allowing herself a few cathartic sobs. She hoped that nobody would see her, although presumably there was at least one camera trained on her, somewhere or other. They were everywhere: hidden in hollowed-out tree trunks, or in secret cavities inside the rocks; mounted on retractable poles sprouting from within the greenery. There was no privacy, none at all. Of course, she had forfeited that when she had agreed to take part. But still, she had never imagined that it would be this hard …

Backwards and forwards she rocked, forwards and backwards. She tried to remember the meditation techniques her yoga instructor had once taught her, but that was a long time ago. They would be no use anyway. The images she was trying to purge were overwhelming, immovable, and made it impossible to call anything else to mind. They were banal images, at first, from earlier in the day: late morning, early afternoon, something like that. Daylight anyway. Bright sunshine. First of all, the clearing into which her guide had led her. The table at which she had been required to sit down. The perspex tank which had been placed on the table, and inside it … Oh God. The insect, the … thing, the … what was it called? A ‘Goliath stick insect’, the programme’s two chortling hosts had informed her. For Christ’s sake, the thing had been at least six inches long. A vivid, sickly green. Six thin, gangly legs, a long torso carapaced in some hard matter, solid and unyielding, and at the end of it … the head, uncannily (save for the two antennae) like a little human head, the beady eyes staring up at her, alert, vital but inscrutable. (The expression of terror she thought she could see there being an example, presumably — at least, please God, let it be so — of pure anthropomorphism.) And then she had been obliged to put on a pair of plastic goggles (she was still not sure why), and then screw her eyes tightly shut, and then the ‘insect wrangler’ (yes, there really was somebody with that job description) had taken the poor, revolting creature, and Val had opened her mouth wide, and then the thing was inside her, inside her mouth, she could feel it, feel it wriggling, struggling frantically, its obscenely long legs flailing against her tongue and the roof of her mouth, her mouth which had become a prison, a cage for this animal … Almost at once she could feel the gorge rising in her throat and she had felt an incredible urge to gag and open her mouth and expel the insect on to the table in front of her, but she knew that for every ten seconds she kept it inside her, her campmates would be given a portion of food, and she didn’t want to let them down. Now it was wriggling and thrashing even more violently inside there, and trying to escape out the back by forcing itself down her throat, but Val just screwed her eyes even tighter — her eyes from which tears of distress were starting to leak — and closed her mouth ever more firmly. Even then part of the insect, one of its legs perhaps, must still have been protruding, because now one of the chortling hosts said, ‘Come on, Val, be a sport, you’ve got to get the whole thing in there,’ and his co-host had giggled and said, ‘Ooh, I bet it’s been quite a while since a fella said that to you, eh, Val?’ and the whole crew had started laughing, but it was only now, in retrospect, that she realized the leering offensiveness of what they had said, at the time she was just training all her energy on to the task of not gagging, not vomiting, of keeping her eyes and her lips closed, trying to ignore the scrabble of long, angular, insectile legs kicking inside her mouth, until, suddenly, the creature became still. And then Val thought, Oh my God, have I killed it? but this thought only lasted for a second or two because then she felt something else in her mouth, something liquid, and a taste — Christ — a taste fouler and more vile than anything she had ever tasted or imagined tasting, and she realized that the stick insect was shitting itself inside her mouth, literally shitting itself with fear, and as she felt the first trickle of liquid excrement sliding down her throat, her stomach heaved and her gorge rose and with a loud, choking gurgle she spat the insect out on to the table, followed by a thin trail of drool, after which she must have … if not passed out, exactly, at least lost all awareness of what was happening around her, because she did not remember the cheers and applause of the hosts or the crew, she remembered nothing until she was sitting up in a chair, wrapped in a blanket, drinking mouthful after mouthful of water and swilling it around and spitting it out in a desperate attempt to get rid of that taste, that hideous taste which was coming back to her even now and making her want to gag again …

Val rolled over on to her hands and knees, crawled towards a clump of ferns and vomited, as quietly as she could. Thanks to her failure at the trial, her dinner that evening had been meagre — just a handful of rice and beans — and now all of it had come back up. Still, she felt better for it. Another few minutes to compose herself, and she might be ready to rejoin the others. The sooner the better, because she needed to talk to Danielle. She had spoken too sharply to her after dinner. Made some comment about her not helping with the washing-up. Val had been in the right, no doubt about that — Danielle was lazy, she never helped out with any of the routine tasks around the camp — but it had sounded snappy, and she didn’t want to upset her: or, of course, to alienate the viewers at home. As soon as she felt better again, she would go and apologize.

Danielle was not in the camp. She was lying with Pete in a clearing, about fifty yards away. They were both flat on their backs, staring up at the stars through the canopy of trees. Danielle’s face, as so often, was without expression. Pete looked bored and restless.

‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude,’ said Val.

‘That’s all right,’ he said, sitting up. ‘Did you want a word?’

‘Yes — with Danielle, actually.’

‘No probs,’ he said. ‘I need a dump anyway.’

He got up and left. Val squatted down beside Danielle, and said: ‘Hello, lovey. I didn’t break up a romantic moment, did I?’

Danielle inclined her perfect head a few degrees. ‘Don’t worry. No chance of romance with him, as far as I’m concerned. He’s a tosser. We were only doing it because the director keeps telling us to look more romantic with each other.’

Val nodded, not really knowing what to say to this. She was surprised to hear that they had been getting instructions from the ‘director’. She didn’t even know that there was such a person.

‘What did you want anyway?’ Danielle asked.

‘It’s about the washing-up.’

Danielle turned away from her again, and looked blankly up at the sky. ‘Yeah? What about it?’

‘I just came to say … I’m sorry if I was a bit rude to you. You’re not angry, are you?’

‘You didn’t show me much respect in front of the others,’ Danielle said, pouting. ‘I know I’m younger than you, but, you know, I think I deserve to be treated in a certain way …’

‘I was respectful, actually,’ said Val. ‘I mean, I could have said, “Oh, come on, you lazy cow, when are you going to start pulling your weight around here?” Couldn’t I? But I would never talk to you like that.’

‘I suppose …’ said Danielle. She was softening.

‘I mean, we’ve all got to do our bit, that’s all, if we’re going to get through the next couple of weeks. “We’re all in this together,” as our beloved Mr Osborne would say.’

‘Who?’

‘George Osborne. The Chancellor of the Exchequer?’ Danielle’s face showed no comprehension, and Val could not stop herself from laughing. ‘Oh, Danielle, you really are the limit. What planet do you live on? Eh? Don’t you ever read the newspapers?’

‘I don’t have time.’

‘You should make time. Everyone should know what’s going on in the world.’

‘I work hard, you know. I’m in the gym at six thirty every day. And then all day, I’m either on a shoot or in a recording studio.’

‘Recording studio?’

‘Yeah. I’m a singer. That’s what I really want to be. I’m making a record at the moment, but, you know, it takes a long time to get the notes right and everything. I haven’t been trained, or anything like that.’

‘Do you play an instrument?’

‘I can play “Yellow Submarine” on the guitar. You know, the Beatles’ old song.’

Val felt a sudden wave of tenderness towards her. She looked so young; and not just young but lonely, and vulnerable.

‘Bet you miss all that at the moment, don’t you?’

‘I miss everything,’ said Danielle. ‘It’s horrible in here. They keep making me do tasks with Pete and everything because they’ve sold lots of stories to the magazines about our big romance, but we can’t stand each other. I don’t like any of the people in here. They’re all old and boring. I want to go home. I miss my Mom and Dad. I miss my sister. And the one I miss the most — the one I really miss — is Caesar. Our boxer dog.’

‘Oh, I know, love,’ said Val, putting a sympathetic hand to her shoulder. ‘I heard about that. Your Mom told me just before I came in. It’s awful, isn’t it, when a pet dies. I had a cat called Byron, and when he passed away —’

‘What?’ said Danielle, sitting up and staring at her. ‘What are you talking about?’

Val put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh my God. You didn’t know.’

‘Has something happened to Caesar? What’s happened to him? Tell me!’

After that, Val had no choice but to break the news to her, and, as soon as she heard it, Danielle burst into tears. She sobbed in Val’s arms for a few minutes, and Val dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, which was soon soaked through.

‘Sorry — I’ve spoiled your Kleenex,’ was the first thing Danielle said, when she was able to talk again.

‘Never mind — I’ll go and get some more,’ said Val. She gave what she hoped was a comforting laugh, trying to lighten the mood. ‘There’s plenty more where that came from.’

As she set off on this errand, she threw one glance back, and saw that Danielle was gazing after her, her face not quite as blank as usual. Her baby blue eyes were now limpid pools of sadness, her lovely young face streaked with tears.

*

‘Shit,’ said Alison. ‘SHIT! Mum, you fucking idiot — what are you playing at? What did you go and do that for?’

She sat forward on the sofa, gripping the remote control so tightly that it might have cracked in her hand. Panic seized her; her breathing accelerated rapidly; she was starting to hyperventilate. Not wishing to listen to the show’s closing theme tune, she muted the TV, rose to her feet and began to pace the room, doing her best to slow down her breaths. On the screen, telephone numbers for voting off the different contestants scrolled by silently. Finally Alison paused in front of the television, turned it off, put her head in her hands and said to herself, one more time: ‘Oh Mum, why did you have to do that?’

It had been bad enough watching her mother perform the trial, having to put that huge creature into her mouth and hold it there while everyone around her stood watching and laughing. She knew that Val was afraid of every kind of insect. The terror and revulsion had been written all over her face, but as far as the programme makers (and, Alison supposed, the viewers) were concerned, that just made the whole thing funnier. But then, after that, at the end of the programme … the conversation between her mother and Danielle: how had that happened? What the hell was going on there?

Val had spoken a little sharply to Danielle after dinner. She had asked her to help with the washing-up, and pointed out that she didn’t do much work around the camp generally. Danielle had looked offended, and had wandered off to lie down with Pete, at some distance from the camp. Then a few minutes later, Val had interrupted them, apparently with a view to renewing her complaint. The conversation as broadcast had gone like this:

VAL: I didn’t break up a romantic moment, did I?

DANIELLE: Don’t worry. What did you want anyway?

VAL: It’s about the washing-up.

DANIELLE: Yeah? What about it? You didn’t show me much respect in front of the others. I know I’m younger than you, but, you know, I think I deserve to be treated in a certain way …

VAL: Oh, come on, you lazy cow, when are you going to start pulling your weight around here?

(Close-up on Danielle’s face, shocked.)

VAL: What planet do you live on? Eh?

(Another close-up on Danielle, who now bursts into tears. Val immediately walks off.)

VAL: (glancing back, laughing) There’s plenty more where that came from.

(Close-up on Danielle gazing after her, her face streaked with tears.)

*

Alison didn’t dare check on Twitter that night. She went straight to bed, and after lying awake for an hour or two, wondering what demon could have possessed her mother out there in the Australian jungle, provoking such an outburst of rudeness and casual cruelty, she fell at last into a fitful sleep. But it didn’t last long. She was awake by six o’clock, and after making herself a double-strength cup of instant coffee, she fired up her laptop.

The news was bad. Terrible, in fact. Her mother’s account was haemorrhaging followers — she was down to just over 3,000 — and the abusive messages now seemed to be coming in at the rate of four or five every minute. Most of them had the hashtag #team danielle, and it was fair to say that the model’s million followers were not happy with what they’d seen on the television last night.

Bitch from hell

Fuck off I want to kill you

You are just a fucking big bully ugly cow

Hello Crabs I hope you get vd youself but that wd mean some1 wd have to fuck you 1st so not very likely haha

You made our angel cry we will make you suffer bitch

Have never hated someone like I hate u. Hope u die of cancer

Fuck you cunt

You big cunt bully. You deserve to be raped till your dried out old gash is sore and bleeding

Alison felt physically sick when she read that: she had to go to the bathroom and kneel in front of the toilet for a few minutes, convinced she was going to throw up. Nothing came, though: just dry retching. After that, reluctantly, out of filial duty and nothing more, she forced herself to do some more quick searching. She looked her mother up on Google Images, and where once she would have found a few ancient publicity shots and grabs from her Top of the Pops routine, there were already hundreds of new pictures. Where had they all come from, and how had they been uploaded so quickly? Most of them were from yesterday’s trial: horrid, grotesque close-ups of her mother’s face, every pore and wrinkle showing, her eyes screwed up behind those plastic goggles and her face contorted in a mixture of terror and loathing as she took the stick insect into her mouth. Pictures from the last few moments of the trial, showing her bent double over the table while retching, with a trail of vaguely green-coloured drool dangling from her lips, seemed to be especially popular. But there was nothing that Val, or Alison, or anybody else, would be able to do about this. This was how her mother was going to be remembered online, from now on.

It was all too depressing to contemplate. Alison glanced briefly at Google News, where she learned that, according to a new poll, her mother was now the most unpopular contestant in the show’s ten-year history, and then she went back to bed.

*

Val warmed her hands at the fire, smiled around at her fellow campers and felt a spreading glow of happiness. Today had been a wonderful day. Really relaxing and enjoyable. First of all, Dino, the handsome and relentlessly macho TV chef from New York who was the show’s token American presence, had been voted to undergo the daily trial. It was something to do with gathering plastic stars from the floor of a water tank filled with eels, and he had done spectacularly well, which meant not only that they’d all had a full complement of food that evening, but after dinner — any minute now, in fact — they were also to be provided with a surprise ‘luxury’ item. Naturally, this had put everyone in a good mood. In the afternoon, chilling out in their hammocks, Val and Roger the historian had struck up a conversation, a proper conversation, which started by being about the British weather but had then somehow turned to the coalition government and whether it really had a mandate from the voters. It had been the first real discussion, the first time anyone in the camp had actually talked about something important, since Val had arrived three (was it three?) days ago, and had proved so interesting that after a while everybody joined in, even Pete and Danielle; both of whom were amazed to hear that Britain had a coalition government at all, since this piece of news seemed to have passed them by last year, and indeed Val still wasn’t at all sure that either of them had really grasped the concept of a coalition despite a good deal of patient explanation from Roger. Anyway, that was by the by. It wasn’t a great victory, maybe, but this conversation had been a small step towards bringing everyone together, creating a more cooperative atmosphere, which Val had decided was her true role in the camp. And now she could see the result: for the first time, all twelve of them were sitting around the fire after dinner, chatting and telling stories. True, it was pretty inane stuff, but she was not really listening. She was content to let the chatter wash over her, becoming one with the other noises of the forest at night: the mysterious rustles in the undergrowth, the chirruping of cicadas, the occasional distant, plangent cry of some unknown inhabitant of the nocturnal jungle. Such a long way from Yardley! Such a privilege, when all was said and done, to be here at all! She knew now that she would always treasure this experience, whatever came of it.

Just then they heard footsteps on the edge of the camp.

‘Hey up, that must be our surprise,’ said Pete, and rose to his feet. He went off to investigate, and came back a few seconds later carrying an acoustic steel-string guitar tied up in pink ribbon. ‘Look at this — brilliant!’ he said. ‘Can anybody play it?’

The guitar kept them entertained for a further couple of hours. Val was the only real musician in the camp, and she was happy to play until her wrist was aching and the tips of her fingers felt as though they were about to bleed. They sang songs by Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Madonna and the Kinks; they crooned their way through ‘House of the Rising Sun’, ‘Scarborough Fair’ and ‘Dancing Queen’. Her only respite came for a few minutes when Danielle insisted on attempting her version of ‘Yellow Submarine’, with Pete on backing vocals. It was hard to say which was worse, her playing or her singing, and neither of them could remember the words to the verses, but everyone was feeling so cheerful by then that the whole thing was just carried through on a wave of laughter. It put them all in an even better mood than before.

Eventually they ran out of songs. At which point, Val asked: ‘Do you mind if I play you something that I wrote?’

Nobody minded. Everyone was eager to hear it.

‘It’s not the song I’m famous for. It’s a new one.’

‘Ooh, lovely,’ said Danielle.

‘It’s not very jolly,’ said Val. ‘In fact it’s quite sad and … sort of introspective.’

‘Stop apologizing and get on with it,’ said Roger.

‘All right.’

She smiled around at them all, nervously, suddenly remembering that she was addressing not just an audience of eleven friends (she thought of them as her friends now) but more than ten million television viewers. This was, in effect, the most important performance of her life. But she felt up to the task. If she could do that thing with the stick insect, after all, she could do pretty much anything. And she knew this song intimately: it was part of her body, by now. Singing it to these people would be as natural as drawing breath.

The fingers of her left hand arranged themselves to form the first chord — an F major seven, with an open A-string as the bass note — and with the thumb of her right hand she struck the six strings of the guitar with firm, tender authority.

Watch the water take me home, absence makes me fonder

Choose a path where you can go, days are getting longer

She knew at once that she had caught their attention. A great stillness had descended on the camp. The music brought everything to a halt: the passage of time was suspended. Val reached for the highest note in the melody, found it easily.

Still I try to do my best but I need your breath

As the moonshine controls the water, I will sink and swim

The two chords underpinning the word ‘swim’ were a D minor and then a darker and more ambiguous F minor sixth. Val had been singing without thinking until this point, vocalizing the words in a semi-automatic state, but with the next lines, she realized that she could almost be reflecting on her current situation:

Turn around and look at me, in many ways I’m stronger

Choose a path and set me free, to beyond and yonder

It was true: this experience had made her stronger. Started to restore her confidence, her confidence which had been shattered over the last few years by a series of disappointments in her career and her personal life. That confidence was expressing itself, now, through the movement of her fingers on the strings of the guitar, the strength of her voice ringing out through the attentive night air. Once again it felt — at last — that she was doing what she was born to do.

The song was over. There was silence around the fire for a few moments, except for the crackling of the embers. Then the eleven campmates began to applaud, slowly and feelingly, and when the applause had died down, they hugged Val, and kissed her, and told her how beautiful the song was, and asked if they could buy it and when she was going to record it, and she could not keep herself from crying and telling them, truthfully, that this was one of the happiest moments of her life.

*

Alison did not think that she could bear to watch another episode of the programme by herself, in that empty living room. Remembering Selena’s invitation to come over for a family dinner whenever she felt like it, she phoned and asked if she could drop by and watch the show with them that night.

‘’Course you can,’ said Selena. ‘Come round about seven. We’ll have something to eat first.’

Just as Selena had promised, the atmosphere in her house was cheerful and raucous, with everybody crowding into the kitchen to help her mother with the cooking, apart from her father Sam, who sat at the kitchen table reading the Evening Mail, and her brother Navaro, who was in the living room, bent over his Nintendo DS, which was emitting a constant series of pops and beeps.

There was the latest edition of some celebrity gossip magazine on the kitchen counter, and Alison picked it up, recognizing the two faces on the cover: ‘PETE AND DANIELLE’, the headline said. ‘GET THE LOWDOWN ON THE HOTTEST JUNGLE ROMANCE EVER.’ She flicked through to the relevant article.

‘I already read that,’ said Ashley, Selena’s mother. ‘They don’t mention your mom. I suppose they printed it before she went on the programme.’

‘Probably a good thing,’ said Alison, putting it back on the counter after a half-hearted glance. ‘She doesn’t seem to be doing herself any favours out there.’

‘I think your mom’s doing just fine,’ said Ashley, who was stirring a pot filled with some peppery, aromatic fish stew. ‘Takes guts to go out there and do what she’s doing. I hope you’re proud of her.’

Over dinner they could hardly avoid talking more about Val and her Australian adventure. Selena and her family had not been following the online response so they had no idea how vitriolic most of the reactions had been. They thought that Val had been rather harsh to Danielle the night before, but apart from that their main complaint was that she was being given so little airtime. Alison was relieved, and reminded herself that not everybody spent hours poring over the internet. Most of the population had better things to do with their time. So perhaps all was not lost yet, for her mother. Sam asked her, straight out, how much Val was being paid for her participation, and although his wife scolded him for being so rude, Alison saw no reason why she shouldn’t tell them: it was twenty thousand pounds.

‘Well,’ said Ashley, ‘I thought it would be more than that, actually. And what’s she going to spend it on? I hope she’s going to take you somewhere nice at Christmas. Maybe buy you a few nice things to wear as well.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Alison. ‘She’ll probably spend a lot of it on studio time.’

‘She deserves another hit record, that’s for sure. I really loved the last one. She’s a very talented lady, your mom. And don’t mind my husband, with his nosy questions. He’s never had any manners.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Alison. ‘I don’t mind answering questions.’

‘I’ve got one,’ said Malikah, one of Selena’s younger sisters. ‘Can I feel your false leg?’

At nine o’clock, they sat down together to watch the programme. Alison was nervous, but this time it wasn’t too much of an ordeal: partly because Selena’s family kept up such a lively running commentary, and partly because her mother was hardly in this episode at all. There was quite a jolly scene in the last five minutes, when somebody brought a guitar into camp and Pete and Danielle did an entertainingly terrible performance of ‘Yellow Submarine’. Val could be seen singing along with the chorus: she was smiling and looked like she was having a good time. Apart from that, she was barely even glimpsed on screen.

‘Ah, that was funny,’ said Ashley, muting the television when the news came on. ‘Really, that silly girl couldn’t sing to save her life.’

‘Fuck me, she’s fit though,’ said Navaro. They were practically the first words he’d spoken that evening.

‘You mind your language, mister,’ Ashley said. Then, turning to Alison: ‘I wonder why they didn’t give your mom the guitar to play? That would have been nice.’

‘Don’t know,’ said Alison. ‘She’s quite shy, my mother. I know that sounds weird, for a singer, but she really is. Very shy, in fact.’

‘Well, that’s probably the reason,’ said Ashley. ‘But I still think it’s a shame. We would all like to have heard her voice again.’

*

A few minutes later Alison left, and Selena offered to walk with her to the bus stop. It was a cold night, enough to make their teeth chatter as they stamped their feet to keep warm and waited for the Number 11 to appear. Once again, Alison found it hard to believe that this, a few days ago, had been her mother’s world, and yet now she was sitting around a camp fire in Australia with a guitar and a bunch of minor celebrities. She should have grown used to the unreality of it, by now, but it continued to stagger her.

‘By the way,’ she said, trying to put this thought aside, ‘I wanted to tell you something. Something about me. A little secret.’

‘Oh God,’ said Selena. ‘Not another one. It’s not your other leg, is it?’

Alison shook her head, smiling.

‘Glass eye?’

‘No.’ But now, some undertone of urgency in her voice made Selena fall silent, waiting for the revelation. ‘I’m gay,’ Alison said finally, in a quiet, neutral way.

‘Oh.’ Selena had been staring at the pavement. Now she looked up brightly. ‘Well, that’s no big deal really, is it?’

‘Isn’t it? You sure?’

‘Of course.’

Alison let out a deep breath and smiled and hugged her. ‘I’m so relieved.’

‘Why?’ said Selena, clasping her tightly in return. ‘What did you think I was going to say?’

‘I don’t know … People react in funny ways sometimes.’

‘They do?’

‘Well, actually I’ve only told two people — you and my friend Rachel. But she took it so badly it’s made me a bit nervous.’

‘Why, what did she say?’

Alison traced a careless pattern on the pavement with her right foot as she began to explain: ‘I’ve known Rachel for years. We were at primary school together. She lives in Leeds but we’ve always stayed in touch. So a couple of months ago, I wrote her a letter. And then the next day, I sent her a message on Snapchat, asking if she’d got the letter. And she sent a reply, saying that she had. And then I asked her what she was doing that night, and she said …’ (Alison swallowed hard) ‘… I mean I can hardly believe she said this, but she said she was going to be sleeping with her brother, and it was just the sort of thing I liked doing.’

Selena gaped at her. ‘She said what?’

‘Yeah. Being gay, for her, apparently, is just like fucking your own brother.’

‘Is that what she said?’

‘I only saw the message for a few seconds, because that’s how it works, but that’s pretty much what she wrote. I asked her where she was and she said: “With my brother. We’re doing the incest thing tonight.”’

Incredulous, half laughing and half frowning, Selena was almost lost for words: ‘Wow. That’s a … pretty weird thing to say. And a weird way of saying it, actually.’

‘Well, it was handwritten, and, like I said, it wasn’t on the screen for long. But that’s what it looked like. And then she said, “Right up your street I would have thought.”’

‘Shit,’ said Selena. ‘That’s harsh. Is that it? I mean, is that the sum total of her response?’

‘She did write me a letter, but I couldn’t face reading it. I chucked it away.’

‘Is she … is she, like, a born-again Christian or something?’

‘Not the last time I looked,’ said Alison, and then the bus swung into view. They managed a quick kiss on the cheek — fumbled but tender — before she climbed on board.

*

Danielle and Val followed their guide along the jungle path. They had no way of knowing it, but it was only ten thirty in the morning. The air was already dense and sticky, and the path was heavy going.

‘Can I ask you something, Val?’ said Danielle, over her shoulder.

‘Of course.’

‘It’s about your song the other night — which was really lovely, by the way.’

‘Oh, thank you.’

‘I can’t stop thinking about it, actually. Can’t stop thinking about the words.’

‘Yeah? Well, that’s a good sign, I suppose.’

‘It’s just that line: “I need your breath, Like the moonshine controls the water.” Have I got it right?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘I was just wondering … what does that mean, then? How can moonshine control the water? Is it just like … something you made up?’

Val hesitated, not sure whether this was a joke or not. She decided it wasn’t. ‘Well no, I was just talking about … you know, the moon, and the tides. The gravitational pull of the moon.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know — how when the tide goes in and out, that’s because of the moon.’

Danielle stopped and turned. Now she was the one suspecting a joke.

‘Are you winding me up?’ she said.

‘Of course not. I’d never do that.’

‘That’s why the tide goes in and out? Really?’

Val nodded.

Danielle’s beautiful eyes widened. This was a revelation to her, it seemed, and a very important one.

‘That’s incredible. Just fucking incredible. When we get out of here,’ she said, turning back to resume her progress along the path, ‘I want to spend a lot more time with you. You know so much. How did you get to know all these things?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Val, almost tripping on a creeper. ‘It helps if you work in a library, I suppose …’

In a few more minutes, they emerged into a wide clearing, where their chortling hosts, inevitably, were waiting to greet them.

‘Morning, ladies!’

‘We’ve got a nice little treat for you today.’

‘Yes, today we’re going to do not one but two jungle trials!’

‘But there’s a twist, as always.’

‘Yesterday we asked the viewers at home to say who was their favourite person in the camp.’

‘The person with the most votes is going to do the first of today’s trials, which is a pretty easy one, to be honest. It’s called The Fluffy Jungle Path of Pink Marshmallows and Cuddly Toys.’

‘Unfortunately, the person with the smallest number of votes is not going to have quite such a nice time. She’s going to be entering something called The Cave of Evil.’

‘So, are you ready to hear the results of the vote?’

They both nodded.

Val wasn’t surprised, of course, to hear that Danielle was the most popular person in the camp. But it was a shock to learn that she herself had been voted the least popular. As soon as the news was broken to her, with the hosts’ typical cheeky, ironic grins, her stomach turned over and she felt her legs were about to buckle. The least popular? How on earth had that happened? All the hard-earned confidence acquired over the last few days drained out of her. She barely knew what was happening as Danielle was led away in one direction and then she felt herself being taken by the arm as the other host (which one was it? She never could tell them apart) propelled her in the direction of a steep, intimidating escarpment at the other end of the clearing.

‘Now, Val,’ he was saying, his voice dripping with boyish charm, ‘how are you with the old creepy-crawlies?’

She had no idea what he was saying, what she had just been asked. All she knew, as her eyes slowly came back into focus, was that she was being pointed in the direction of a low, narrow aperture in the rock, which seemed to lead into nothingness. There was just about room for a human being to crawl through it, and a few seconds later she was inside.

*

Alison stood in the kitchen, her hands over her ears. She’d been in this situation countless times before: on her own, in the kitchen, trying to block out the sounds of the TV, which Val always turned up too loud. What could be more mundane, more banal? Except that tonight there was a crucial difference: tonight, the sounds coming from the television, the sounds she was trying to ignore, were her own mother’s screams of distress.

They were awful sounds. Keening, animal howls coming from thousands of miles away: from somewhere in the depths of a cave in a corner of the Australian rain forest, captured as digital information and beamed faithfully into Yardley via the television’s speakers. This latest ordeal would have taken place several hours ago, of course, but that was little consolation to Alison, who was having to live through every moment of it now, in real time. Sometimes when the screams died down she could hear the chortling host intervene with comments like ‘OK Val, here comes the next lot!’ or ‘Ooh, these are nasty little fellas all right, aren’t they?’ But otherwise there was no respite from her mother’s lacerating, inhuman screeching. How long had it been going on for, now? No more than a couple of minutes, surely. But she wasn’t sure that she could stand it any longer.

‘Selena!’ she shouted towards the living room. ‘For fuck’s sake turn it down.’

The TV was muted and a few seconds later Selena came into the kitchen. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘It’s finished. They’ve gone over to the adverts.’ She saw that Alison had been crying, and took a Kleenex out of her pocket. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Let’s clean you up a bit.’

‘Fuck,’ said Alison, wiping her eyes with the back of her sleeve. ‘That was rough.’

‘She didn’t cope too well, did she?’

‘Of course she didn’t fucking cope! That would have been her worst nightmare. She’s claustrophobic for a start.’

The cave into which Val had been made to crawl had been no more than two feet high, and not much wider. Once inside, she had been told to lie on her back, and then the entrance had been sealed with a rock.

‘She also has nyctophobia.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Fear of the dark. And entomophobia.’

‘Fear of … insects?’

Alison nodded. ‘The silly cow. She should have fucking … told them.’ She grabbed another fistful of Kleenex from the box, and blew her nose. ‘Were they all over her? What were they?’

‘I don’t know — cockroaches, mainly. And some spiders.’

‘Shit. She hates spiders.’

‘It’s over now, Al. She’s got through it.’

Selena took Alison in her arms and held her close, and for a while they just stood like that, not moving, beneath the glare of the kitchen’s strip lighting. Selena waited for Alison to relax, to soften beneath the embrace, but it wasn’t happening.

‘She was here,’ Alison said eventually. ‘This time last week she was here with me. A week later she’s in the Australian jungle and someone’s buried her alive and she’s got spiders crawling into her mouth. I mean, what the fuck …? What happened to us this week?’

Whatever it was that had happened, it was soon over. At the very end of that night’s episode, the show went live to Australia, where it was now eight o’clock in the morning. It was time for the first of the celebrities to be voted off. Forlornly, Alison and Selena sat on the sofa, wielding two mobile phones and a landline, repeatedly punching in the number that was supposed to save Val from expulsion. But they were wasting their time (and money). She was, by some margin, the contestant with the fewest votes, and just a few minutes later she had left the camp and was being ushered into the makeshift outdoor studio where she would have her final interview with the two hosts. Sitting down beside them, she looked tired and skeletal. Her eyes were blank with shock and exhaustion. Her skin was grey. When the interview was over, she was directed to walk across the little suspended wooden bridge to the spot where her car and driver would be waiting. The cameras followed her as the programme’s theme tune played out. To Alison, her mother looked older and more frail than ever. Her stoop was worse. At the far end of the bridge, Alison could glimpse Steve, holding out his arms in expectation. He greeted her mother with a brief, amicable hug. The credits came to an end and Alison turned off the TV.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘That’s that.’

She poured a glass of wine for herself and another for Selena, who looked at it doubtfully.

‘I should really be getting home in a minute,’ she said.

‘Well … Just one more. Won’t do you any harm.’

Forty minutes later, the telephone rang. It was Val, calling from Australia. She was back at the hotel, crying down the line. Alison tried to comfort her at first but it soon became clear that all her words of reassurance (‘No, really, you came across very well … Everyone here’s been rooting for you …’) were beside the point. The point being that Steve had dumped her. Apparently, while the celebrities had been in the jungle, all their partners and guests had been taken out on organized day trips, and in the process a romance had developed between Steve and Jacqui, Pete’s aunt. This afternoon they were flying up to Cairns to spend a few days surfing together.

‘I’ve got to stay here for another week,’ Val said, between snivelling breaths. ‘What am I going to do, all by myself?’

‘I don’t know, Mum,’ said Alison. ‘I can tell you what you shouldn’t do.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Go online, or read the papers.’

She hung up when it became clear that her mother was too tired to speak any more. Selena had overheard most of the conversation and was already fuming with sisterly indignation.

‘Has what I think just happened, actually happened?’

‘Yep. I should have warned her. I should have warned her about that fucking creep. Next time I see him, I’m going to get him on the floor, and give him such a kicking …’

‘Can I join in?’ Selena asked. ‘I’m pretty good at kicking. I’ve got two good legs, for a start.’

Alison gave a long, grateful laugh, and instinctively reached out to touch her friend on the cheek.

‘I don’t suppose you could stay the night?’ she said.

*

Perry Barr — Handsworth — Winson Green — Bearwood — Harborne — Selly Oak — Cotteridge — Kings Heath — Hall Green — Acocks Green — Yardley — Stechford — Fox & Goose — Erdington — Witton — Perry Barr.

Shit!

Did you say that out loud? Did you scream? Why are they all looking at you?

Must have dozed off.

— Yardley — Stechford — Fox & Goose —

Same thing. Same images. Same sensations. The darkness, first of all. The knowledge that the roof is just above your head, that you can’t move. And then the noises. The scurrying noises, as they empty the first load on to you, from somewhere up above, through some hole in the rock.

No sleep again last night. Not a wink. This seems to be the only place you can sleep now. But you don’t want to. As soon as you sleep, you hear them again. Feel them crawling. Up your legs, inside your trousers, down the front of your shirt. Oh fuck.

— Fox & Goose — Erdington — Witton —

Two months now. Two months since you got back. Two months and no change. Nothing. Same old shit, day after day.

— Witton — Perry Barr — Handsworth —

Doctor says it’s only a matter of time, a matter of waiting, but what does she know? All they do is give you pills anyway. She doesn’t understand. Nobody understands, knows what it’s like. ‘Look on the bright side,’ for fuck’s sake.

— Handsworth — Winson Green — Bearwood —

They don’t know. They think the worst thing that happened was having spiders all over you, having to shove an insect down your throat. That wasn’t the worst. Hope you get VD. Alison was right. You deserve to be raped. You shouldn’t have looked. Can’t get rid of words like that. Twenty grand, for having shit like that poured all over you. Not worth it. Ten, anyway, after the Australian tax people took their bit. And by the time you paid off Visa, and the overdraft …

— Bearwood — Harborne — Selly Oak —

Still, you’re out of debt now. Look on the bright side. Out of debt, for the time being.

— Selly Oak — Cotteridge — Kings Heath —

Twenty grand. Not so bad. Not till you heard what Danielle was getting. Three hundred and fifty. Them and us. ‘We’re all in this together.’ I don’t think so. ‘You know so much, Val.’ ‘When we get out of here, I want to spend a lot more time with you.’ Yeah, right, you little bitch. Got my number, haven’t you? So how come you never returned a single call? Nor any of the others.

Truth is, you don’t belong with people like that. Stupid to think you ever did. This is where you belong. On the Number 11 bus. Look around you. Get real. These are your people. Ordinary people. Decent people.

— Kings Heath — Hall Green — Acocks Green —

Look at that old dear. Saw her yesterday, didn’t you? Somewhere or other. Did she come into the library? A lot of them do, to keep warm.

No, the food bank, that was it. She was on her way out when you went in. Held the door for her. Gave you a funny look, like you weren’t supposed to be there. Why not? You were only looking around. Bit of natural curiosity, that’s all. Wanted to see what kind of stuff they had there. Not going to start using it. Hasn’t come to that yet.

Look on the bright side.

Now why’s she staring at you?

Needs someone to help with the trolley.

— Acocks Green — Yardley —

‘Excuse me, shall I give you a hand with that?’

The woman’s gaze met hers. Her eyes were pale blue, veiny, watery. Her hands were shaking as they grasped the handle of her shopping trolley.

‘You’re a nasty piece of work,’ she said at last, as the bus came to a halt, the doors hissed open, and she eased herself down the step on to the pavement. ‘Why don’t you piss off back to the jungle where you belong?’

~ ~ ~

H. G. Wells, ‘The Door in the Wall’ (1911):

‘The fact is — it isn’t a case of ghosts or apparitions — but — it’s an odd thing to tell of, Redmond — I am haunted. I am haunted by something — that rather takes the light out of things, that fills me with longings …’