Lethal White

This is hopeless.
Robin slid into the kitchenette, which was hardly larger than two telephone
boxes, where a couple was sitting on the side, the girl with her legs over the
man’s, who had his hand up her skirt, while the teenagers in black were now
foraging with difficulty for something to eat. Under pretense of finding another
drink, Robin sifted through empty cans and bottles, watching the progress of the
teenagers through the cupboards and reflecting how insecure a hiding place a
cereal box would make.
Alf the anarchist appeared in the kitchen doorway as Robin made to leave
the room, now far more stoned than he had been in the pub.
“There she is,” he said loudly, trying to focus on Robin. “Th’ union leader’s
daughter.”
“That’s me,” said Robin, as D’banj sang “Oliver, Oliver, Oliver Twist” from
the second bedroom. She tried to duck under Alf’s arm, but he lowered it,
blocking her exit from the kitchen. The cheap laminate floor was vibrating with
the stamping of the determined dancers in Hayley’s room.
“You’re hot,” said Alf. “’M’I allowed to say that? I mean it in a fucking
feminist way.”
He laughed.
“Thanks,” said Robin, succeeding on her second pass in dodging around him
and getting back into the tiny hall, where the desperate girl was still pounding on
the bathroom door. Alf caught Robin’s arm, bent down and said something
incomprehensible in her ear. When he straightened up again, some of her hair
chalk had left a black stain on the end of his sweaty nose.
“What?” said Robin.
“I said,” he shouted, “‘wanna find somewhere quieter so we can talk more?’”
But then Alf noticed somebody standing behind her.
“All right, Jimmy?”
Knight had arrived in the hall. He smiled at Robin, then leaned up against the
wall, smoking and holding a can of lager. He was ten years older than most of
the people there, and some of the girls cast him sideways looks, in his tight black

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T-shirt and jeans.
“Waiting for the bog as well?” he asked Robin.
“Yeah,” said Robin, because that seemed the simplest way to extricate
herself from both Jimmy and Alf the anarchist, should she need to. Through the
open door of Hayley’s room, she saw Flick dancing, now clearly delighted with
life, laughing at whatever was said to her.
“Flick says your dad was a trade union man,” Jimmy said to Robin. “Miner,
yeah?”
“Yeah,” said Robin.
“Fuck’s SAKE,” said the girl who had been hammering on the bathroom
door. She danced on the spot in desperation for a few more seconds, then pushed
her way out of the flat.
“There are bins to the left!” called one of the other girls after her.
Jimmy leaned closer to Robin, so that she could hear him over the thumping
bass. His expression was, as far as she could see, sympathetic, even gentle.
“Died, though, didn’t he?” he asked Robin. “Your dad. Lungs, Flick said?”
“Yeah,” said Robin.
“I’m sorry,” said Jimmy, quietly. “Been through something similar myself.”
“Really?” said Robin.
“Yeah, my mum. Lungs, as well.”
“Workplace related?”
“Asbestos,” said Jimmy, nodding as he dragged on his cigarette. “Wouldn’t
happen now, they’ve brought in legislation. I was twelve. My brother was two,
he can’t even remember her. My old man drank himself to death without her.”
“That’s really rough,” said Robin sincerely. “I’m sorry.”
Jimmy blew smoke away from her face and pulled a grimace.
“Two of a kind,” said Jimmy, clinking his can of lager against Robin’s.
“Class war veterans.”
Alf the anarchist lurched away, swaying slightly, and disappeared into the
dark room pierced with fairy lights.
“Family ever get compensation?” asked Jimmy.
“Tried,” said Robin. “Mum’s still pursuing it.”
“Good luck to her,” said Jimmy, raising his can and drinking. “Good bloody
luck to her.”
He banged on the bathroom door.
“Fucking hurry up, people are waiting,” he shouted.
“Maybe someone’s ill?” Robin suggested.
“Nah, it’ll be someone having a quickie,” said Jimmy.
Digby emerged from Flick’s bedroom, looking disgruntled.

---

“I’m a tool of patriarchal oppression, apparently,” he announced loudly.
Nobody laughed. Digby scratched his belly under his T-shirt, which Robin
now saw featured a picture of Groucho Marx, and ambled into the room where
Flick was dancing.
“He’s a tool, all right,” Jimmy muttered to Robin. “Rudolf Steiner kid. Can’t
get over the fact that nobody gives him stars for effort anymore.”
Robin laughed, but Jimmy didn’t. His eyes held hers just a fraction too long,
until the bathroom door opened a crack and a plump, red-faced young girl
peeked out. Behind her, Robin saw a man with a wispy gray beard replacing his
Mao cap.
“Larry, you filthy old bastard,” said Jimmy, grinning as the red-faced girl
scuttled past Robin and disappeared into the dark room after Digby.
“Evening, Jimmy,” said the elderly Trotskyist, with a prim smile, and he, too,
left the bathroom to a couple of cheers from the young men outside.
“Go on,” Jimmy told Robin, holding open the door and blocking anyone
else’s attempts to push past her.
“Thanks,” she said, as she slid into the bathroom.
The glare of the strip light was dazzling after the dinginess of the rest of the
flat. The bathroom barely had standing room between the smallest shower Robin
had ever seen, with a grimy transparent curtain hanging off half its hooks, a
small toilet in which a large amount of sodden tissue and a cigarette end was
floating. A used condom glistened in the wicker bin.
Above the sink were three rickety shelves crammed with half-used toiletries
and general clutter, crammed together so that one touch seemed likely to
dislodge everything.
Struck by a sudden idea, Robin moved closer to these shelves. She was
remembering how she had relied on the squeamish ignorance and avoidance of
most men towards matters pertaining to menstruation when she had hidden the
listening devices in a box of Tampax. Her eyes ran swiftly over half-used bottles
of supermarket-brand shampoo, an old tub of Vim, a dirty sponge, a pair of
cheap deodorants and a few well-used toothbrushes in a chipped mug. Very
carefully, because everything was so tightly packed together, Robin eased out a
small box of Lil-Lets that proved to have only one sealed tampon inside it. As
she reached up to replace the box, she spotted the corner of a small, squashy
bundle, encased in a plastic wrapper and hidden behind the Vim and a bottle of
fruity shower gel.
With a sudden stab of excitement, she reached up and wriggled the white
polythene parcel carefully out of the place it had been wedged, trying not to
knock everything over.

---

Somebody hammered on the door.
“I’m fucking bursting!” shouted a new girl.
“Won’t be long!” Robin shouted back.
Two bulky sanitary towels had been rolled up in their own unromantic
wrapping (“for Very Heavy Flow”): the sort of thing a young woman was
unlikely to steal, especially if wearing skimpy clothing. Robin extracted them.
There was nothing odd about the first. The second, however, emitted a small,
crisp cracking noise as Robin bent it. Her excitement mounting, Robin turned it
sideways and saw that it had been slit with what had probably been a razor
blade. Wriggling her fingers into the tissue-like foam within, she felt a thick,
folded piece of paper, which she eased out and unfolded.
The writing paper was exactly the same as that on which Kinvara had written
her farewell note, with the name “Chiswell” embossed across the top and a
Tudor rose, like a drop of blood, beneath it. A few disjointed words and phrases
were scrawled in the distinctive, cramped handwriting Robin had seen so often
in Chiswell’s office, and in the middle of the page one word had been circled
many times.
251 Ebury Street
London
SW1W