The Lubetkin Legacy

Violet: Curtains

The morning sunlight pouring in through the window wakes Violet much too early. The previous tenants seem to have taken everything — even the curtains. She dives back down under the duvet which Jessie lent her. It’s warm in bed but the flat is cold, and she needs a pee. The carpet under her bare feet feels sticky and the smell from the bathroom is disgusting.

Still, it feels good to have her own place after a month of sleeping on Jessie’s sofa, and the daily commute from Croydon was a grind. This ex-council flat in Madeley Court is fifteen minutes by bus from her office. It’ll do for now.

She cleans her teeth, then splashes cold water on her face, pats it dry on her T-shirt — her towel is still in her suitcase — and smiles at her reflection in the smeared mirror screwed to the wall. Despite the dishevelled hair and the zombie-like smudges of mascara around her eyes, she likes what she sees: a young woman with a quick smile, white teeth and healthy skin; a young black woman, twenty-three today, who has just started a good job at a respected City firm, a job she has trained for and worked for; a job she thinks she deserves, but can hardly believe she has got. What she really needs now is a coffee.

There’s no coffee and not even a kettle in the kitchen, but a chaos of takeaway boxes with mouldy remnants of food and broken plastic cutlery sticking out, jumbled together with half-empty drinks bottles, fag ends, scratch cards, socks, trainers, a pair of underpants, opened tins, packets of crisps, pizza crusts … her eyes glaze over. The people before her were students. Boys. Typical. Back in the bedroom, which turns out to be not a bedroom at all but the flat’s living room with three beds in it, she pulls on her clothes, locks the door behind her, and goes downstairs in search of coffee.

A block away on the main road is a small brown-painted café with a striped awning called Luigi’s. She orders a double cappuccino with a croissant and gets out her laptop to check her emails. There is a flurry of messages from her friends, some with ecards attached, and one from her mother wishing her ‘Happy Birthday’ and good luck in her new job.

Thanks, she writes back, I’ll need it. Her role is trainee account manager in the International Insurance Department of Global Resource Management where her boss is the formidable Gillian Chalmers, a small steely woman with a quiet voice and a tough reputation, who grilled her during her interview and seemed displeased at all her answers. The other interviewer was Marc Bonnier who heads up the Wealth Preservation Unit, who was almost as intimidating as Gillian, despite his chin dimple and a twinkling smile that reminds her of Jude Law. Her friend Jessie once told her that a chin dimple is a sign of sensitivity in a male. It would be nice to work for him, she thinks.

At the next table in the café, an elderly man is nursing a latte in a glass cup and reading the Guardian. He has a baldish head and a morose expression on his face. Jessie’s mum once said that reading the Guardian makes you morose compared with the Telegraph. Maybe he does not know this. Apart from him the café is empty. On the main road, buses and lorries are thundering past, but Luigi’s is calm and cosy, with soul music playing quietly in the background, the gentle hiss of the coffee machine and the rustle of the old man’s newspaper. She finishes her coffee, and is about to go in search of some rubber gloves and a load of bin liners to start clearing the flat, but instead she gets out her phone and calls the agency in a cool assertive voice that matches her new status as a City worker.

‘The flat has been left in a disgusting condition. Please send someone round to clear up and make it fit for habitation. Thank you so much.’ Ha! That feels good.

Then she sits down and orders another coffee.