Best Laid Plans by Kathy Lette

Author:Kathy Lette
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2017-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

15

Emergency Stations! This is Not a Drill. Repeat: This is Not a Drill

My sister’s car jounced through Vauxhall at a loose clip.

‘Can you please go faster?’ I fretted.

‘Jesus! I’m driving so fast I’m leaving a roadkill of pedestrian purée along the pavement.’

The sticky neon night rushed past the car window. We veered on to Stockwell High Street on two wheels to find ourselves wedged into a horn-tooting traffic jam, with nobody getting anywhere yet everybody driving like hell.

We finally skidded to a halt in a dank cul-de-sac. As the GPS announced that we’d reached our final destination, I looked up at a grim tombstone of a tower block. The council estate where Kayleigh had told me she’d been squatting was called the Chomsky Estate and I wondered who exactly this guy had infuriated to have such a horrible, depressing place named after him.

One nice thing about finding yourself in such a rough neighbourhood is that you can drink as much alcohol and eat as many carbs and smoke as many cigarettes as you like. Why? Well, it takes a lot off your mind when the average life expectancy is, oh, about thirty-five seconds. Especially if you’re a couple of middle-aged, blow-dried mums with freshly painted pink fingernails wearing pretty floral frocks you put on to go to church that morning. Walking across the asphalt car park, we stuck out like an Amish butter churner at a nudist camp.

We may have looked like easy pickings, but my sister and I have hidden skills and secret weapons. As a flight attendant, Phoebe can tackle an entire drunken football team to the floor and wrap them up in duct tape faster than you can say ‘Doors to manual.’ As a teacher, I was used to wrangling with the most dangerous and unpredictable creature of all – the reluctant pupil. Now, spying a group of skateboarders, we edged towards them, utilizing the pincer-like movements of a pride of African lionesses. Employing my most authoritative ‘Do as I Say or It’s Detention’ voice, I collared two of the boys and extracted directions to Kayleigh’s squat.

Despite grave misgivings, and a vigorous tirade of expletives in the lift-well from some crack addicts, our arrival at the designated dingy tower block didn’t cause much alarm – until, that is, we located the storey that had been taken over by squatters.

I eased open a door which was already yawning on its hinges. The first thing I saw was a pile of fuzzy pizza boxes playing host to an exuberant cockroach colony. The flat also clearly had a rodent infestation – either that, or they were very small squatters. The squat was so filthy even the rats were probably wearing rubber gloves. It was a gloomy place of bare or broken bulbs. A film of grime, grit, sewage fumes and dope haze seemed to coat everything. The peeling paint made it look as though the walls had eczema.

‘John Lewis, eat your heart out,’ my sister said, using flippancy to mask her fears.

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