Let's Dance by Frances Fyfield Read Free Book Online Page B

looking at me.
    George felt the cold sweat of panic. Not the rage of his claustrophobia, the panic of guilty conscience.
    I wanted a friend, he told himself; someone to talk to, but people like Derek can only be enemies. Who loves ya, George?
    George knew he should not have left those letters in his room, not for a minute. Nothing could be left in the hostel rooms, unless it was old clothing no one else would want. Dirty socks, even underwear, walked away from the washing machine in the basement. The laces from George’s training shoes had gone. And so had the letters, probably for the sake of the first-class stamps. Inside prison walls there had been some code of manners. Here there was none. He could see Derek, laughing.
    But then anything, even a piece of paper, was currency to small, skinny Derek. George found the envelopes, less the stamps and the contents, in thewaste bin under the kitchen sink, along with the remnants of Chinese takeaways and polystyrene containers for hamburgers. Derek might return the letters, but he would want to barter, and any material that he could glean from the letters, such as the address from where they were written, would already have been absorbed. George hoped against hope that Derek’s erratic concentration did not make any connection between the address in the letters and his own daily destination. He also hoped the information had not been shared. Derek had the morals and the curiosity of a cat. George had befriended him before realizing the pathetic mewing was the preliminary to a scratch.
    The prevailing smell in the kitchen was soap and nicotine. George did not drink or smoke, the others’ single largest expenditures, and he cooked proper food. They called him Miss Tiggy Winkle. He was the only one who brought inside what he called proper food, namely the raw materials, meat and vegetables, bread that failed to stick to the roof of the mouth, ingredients that required preparation. The length of time he took making his evening meal made him the object of some derision, deflected in part by the element of admiration maintained for anyone who persisted in eccentricities, and the fact that he left what he did not eat, including apple pies and cakes, which were more popular than stew made from scrag-end of lamb or vegetable soup. George earned himself peace and an element of anonymity with the deliberate leftovers of his solid, nutritious food. He flexed hismuscles round the kitchen sink, just to let them see he was guarding his back.
    The kitchen was as far removed from Serena’s as any kitchen could be. Galvanized steel cupboards, an industrial cooker with eight stern gas rings, an oven big enough to roast an ox. Two sets of utilitarian formica-topped tables flanked by stacking chairs, set on a grey-and-white lino floor, always indifferently clean. Bright neon lights to illuminate the spartan comfort and show up all the faces as they set about the business of eating. Attempts had been made towards homeliness, such as posters on the walls and two plastic plants, but the room remained, at best, like a school canteen, at worst, when the day was grey and the smell was bad, a miserable basement room, always warm.
    Warmth drew Derek here, away from the loneliness of his own room, which always smelled vaguely of bodily fluid – sperm, sweat, blood and urine – masked with disinfectant and deodorant, as did all upper three corridors of the hostel for otherwise homeless men, some
en route
between prison and the real world. The smell of sperm came first, like the wafted emissions from a factory making glue. The scent of fifteen loveless men was undisguisable, even when they showered, dressed and stole each other’s toiletries. It was an unreal rite of passage to the real world.
    â€˜Hey up, George. How’ve you been?’
    â€˜All right, thanks. And you?’
    â€˜Oh, fine. I won the lottery again, did I tell you?’
    George was a freak: he shone with