Secret Smile

CHAPTER 6

I remember, when I was thirteen or fourteen, going with Bill to a house in Finsbury Park as his unpaid assistant. It was small, with poky rooms and brown furniture. We stood in the living room that had sheets over the floor, and he gave me a sledgehammer and told me to smash it through the internal wall, into the kitchen on the other side. He had to tell me twice because it seemed impossible to me that I could do this. The wall looked so solid, the room so unchangeably square and drab, and surely you couldn't just break through structures like that, so casually? But he nodded and stood back, so I heaved the hammer, which was almost too heavy for me to lift, behind my left shoulder and swung it as hard as I could into the centre of the wall, spinning with the weight of it, wrenching my arm. Plaster crumbled on to the floor and a crack appeared. I swung again and a hole opened in the surface, jagged and the size of my fist. Again and the hole widened. I could see the centre of the kitchen, a draining board and sink with dripping taps, and beyond that a fractured piece of the small garden, with a bay tree at the end of it. And I felt all at once tremendously excited – to be opening things up like this, new vistas with each swing of the hammer, light suddenly flooding into the dreary room. I think it was what first made me think that I'd like to do what Bill did, though when years later I tried to say that to him he patted me on the shoulder and said: 'We're just painters and decorators, Miranda.'

Every so often at work I still had that feeling of euphoria – like a bubble of air in my chest, like a wind blowing through me. I got it, for instance, with the roof garden in Clapham, which somehow took the lid off the whole house. And when we once uncovered a fireplace that was so vast you could stand inside it and look straight up to see a penny-sized circle of sky at its top. Knocking walls down always fills me with fresh energy. And every so often I have the same elation in my personal life too. It goes along with transition and change, spring, falling in love, travelling to a new country, even that feeling of newness that comes after an illness.

After that lunch, I came home and I made two resolutions: I was going to clean up my flat and I was going to start running. That was all. But I wrote them both down on the back of an envelope, as if I would forget otherwise, and then I underlined each of them twice. I sat back in the chair. I'd drunk three cans of beer and eaten two pieces of marinated chicken, a slab of charred salmon, three slices of garlic bread and a bowl of ice cream. If I were being really virtuous, I could go for a run right now, before it got too dark. Or maybe it wasn't healthy to run on a full stomach. And anyway, I didn't want to jog along the high street in my grey tracksuit trousers that had lost the elastic at the waist.

So I thought I'd start with the flat. I changed into some baggy trousers and a sleeveless T-shirt and put on some music. I rather like tidying my flat, which is on the first floor and very small – just my bedroom, the living room, with a table up against one wall, a galley kitchen with windows overlooking a patchwork of narrow gardens, and the bathroom. Clean surfaces, dishes all put away, a vacuumed carpet, washed floor, neat piles of paper on my desk, laundry in the basket, clothes back in the wardrobe, the gleaming bath, the pens in a mug on the mantelpiece, the smell of bleach, polish, lavatory cleaner, soap. My bare feet were gritty and my arms and forehead slick with sweat by the time I'd finished, and it was late. Afternoon had become dark evening and, now that I'd stopped racing around, I could feel the air had the slicing chill of a cloudless October night.

Some of my friends don't like living alone. It's what they're doing until they no longer have to. But I do. I like the feeling I get when I close the door behind me and go upstairs and everything's quiet and waiting. I don't need anybody's permission to lie in a bath for two hours or go to bed at half past eight or listen to music late into the night, or pour myself a glass of wine and watch a trashy quiz show. I even like eating alone, though I'm not like Troy. I have a very limited and conservative repertoire. Sometimes I eat the same thing several nights a week – for a bit it was scrambled eggs on very buttery brown toast. Then it was Greek salad, which I've perfected: not just tomatoes and cucumber and feta cheese, but avocado, fennel and sun-dried tomatoes as well. And there were a few weeks when I would add a tin of octopus chunks to a bowl of tinned chickpeas. I went off that one quite quickly. When friends come round I either cook chicken breasts with garlic, rosemary and olive oil – you just have to put it in the oven and wait for half an hour – or we get a takeaway. Usually it's a takeaway.

Maybe one of the reasons that Brendan had got on my nerves when we were going out was that he had so quickly made himself at home in my flat. As if it were his home too. But I told myself not to think of Brendan any more. Things were going to be different now.

At a shop called Run Run Run in Camden High Street, I bought a rather lovely silky blue singlet, a pair of white shorts, black suede shoes and a book called Run for Your Life, It was written by a man called Jan who appeared on the back of the book wearing a headband, like a member of Duran Duran. Then I went to the off-licence and bought a bottle of white wine, cold from the fridge. Nothing that was so transparent could possibly contain a significant number of calories. And I bought a packet of expensive crisps that the packet said had been fried in an especially healthy kind of sunflower oil. I fastened the chain on the inside of my door and lay in the bath with a bowl of the crisps and a glass of the wine and read my running book. It was very comforting. The first chapter seemed to be aimed at people who were even less fit than I was. It suggested starting your running schedule with a brisk walk for ten minutes and then running very gently for a hundred yards, followed by another ten-minute walk. It said that the training runner should never get seriously out of breath. At the first sign of any kind of discomfort, just stop. The fatal thing was just to set off and go for a run. 'Better to start too slowly and build up,' said a piece of text in italics, 'than start too quickly and give up.' That sounded fine to me. I flicked through a few pages. It looked like I could skip a few stages and still avoid breaking into a sweat.

The writer recommended the aspiring runner to think of all the exercise they do in the course of their normal working life. According to him, even getting up from your desk to go to the water cooler counted for something. I did far more than that. I carried ladders and planks around. I painted ceilings while holding myself at contorted angles. I held cans of paint for minutes at a time. This was going to be a doddle. I set my alarm clock half an hour earlier than usual, and the following morning I ventured out in my new singlet, shorts and shoes. I rather wished I had bought a mask as well. I walked for five minutes. No problem. I ran hard for about a hundred yards and then the pain began, so I followed Jan's advice and stopped. I walked for a few minutes more and then started to run again. The pain began more quickly this time. My body had started to realize what was being done to it. I slowed down to a walk again and headed for home. Jan said the important thing in the early stages was to avoid causing sprains or pulled muscles by excessively ambitious exercise. I got back to the flat having achieved that without much difficulty.

'Hello? Miranda? I just wanted

I picked up the phone.

'Hi, Mum.'

'I didn't wake you, did I?'

'No. I was about to leave.'

'I just wanted to thank you for yesterday. I was going to ring last night, but then Kerry and Brendan stayed so long… It all went well, didn't it?'

'It was very nice.'

'Doesn't Kerry seem happy?'

'Yes.'

'Do you know what? I think it's a miracle.'

'Mum…'

'A miracle,' she repeated. 'When I think how,,,' I closed my eyes and the words slid into each other. I was going to be good.

'Hi Miranda. It's me, Kerry. Miranda? Are you there?' There was a silence, then a man's voice in the background, though I couldn't catch what he said. Kerry giggled, then said, 'We just wanted to say how are you, and it would be nice to meet up again sometime. What's that?… Oh, Brendan says hello from him too…' I pressed the button to erase the message.

I ran three times that week and I didn't notice any discernible difference. My lungs still hurt as soon as I jogged more than fifty paces; my legs still felt like lead and my heart a stone jolting around inside my ribcage. On hills, people often walked briskly past me. But at least I persevered, and I felt good about that.

On Friday evening, I went out to a party given by my friends Jay and Pattie. I danced and drank beer and then wine, and then some strange schnapps from Iceland that Pattie found at the back of her cupboard when most of her guests had left and we were at the lovely stage of the night, when you don't need to make an effort any more. A dozen or so of us sat around in their dimly lit living room, which was strewn with beer cans and fag ends and odd shoes, and sipped cautiously at the schnapps, which made my eyes water. There was a man I'd met, his name was Nick. He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of me, and after a bit he leaned against my knees, relaxing his weight. I could feel the sweat on his back. I waited a few minutes and then I put my hand on his hair, which was short and soft and brown, like an animal's fur. He gave a little sigh and tipped his head back so 1 could see his upside-down face. He was smiling faintly. I leaned forwards and kissed him quickly on his smile.

When I left, he asked me if I'd like to see him again.

'Yes,' I replied. 'OK.'

'I'll call you.'

'Do that.'

We looked at each other. Beginnings are so very lovely, like smashing that first small hole in the wall and glimpsing a world on the other side.