Free Girl Seven by Hanna Jameson Page A

eyes and wide smile. I felt less on edge around people with open faces, where motives and thoughts and emotions could play out. It was ironic, given that I had always struggled to move beyond two or three of the most basic expressions. My smile was crooked. The rest of the time, regardless of what was happening, I looked like undiluted apathy.
    We were standing on a bridge in the gardens sur­rounding the Meiji Shrine, watching the fish, a few years before we both discovered what it was to really get drunk. I wished that humans could stand a chance of look­ing like those fish, with their silver and orange scales. Sunshine was wasted on skin like ours.
    Tourists passed back and forth behind us, sometimes pausing to take photos. But it was so quiet here. Even in the tourist spots, it was quiet.
    ‘You’re so beautiful, Seven,’ Seiko said.
    ‘No, I’m not,’ I replied.
    Even though her smile was trying to appear sad, she never quite managed to attain it. There was too much light and hope in her face.
    ‘Sometimes I think trying to get to know you is like trying to see through the top of a forest canopy,’ she said. ‘You don’t stand a chance of seeing what lives up there or how it works, but occasionally you can hope that something comes falling down.’

9
    The next day I went back to Tooting. I surprised myself. So long with no inclination to return and now I’d visited twice within a few days, without any major breakdowns. They didn’t have the power I’d expected them to, my old roads and buildings. I was sure I’d feel differently the closer I got to the flat though.
    It was warmer; more like a proper summer and not the sad excuse for a July I’d become used to in England. During the winters the cold didn’t bother me; it was the tragedy of the summers that made me miss Japan.
    This time I bypassed Jensen McNamara’s building and went up to my old block. It looked like it had been refurbished, or at least repainted.
    I tried to guess where the Williams kids might have lived, and buzzed a couple of flats. After some silences, a man answered.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Hi, is it OK if you let me in? I forgot my—’
    ‘Which flat, love?’
    ‘Well...’ Of all the people who could have answered I had to get a fucking inquisitive one. ‘Flat eighteen. Actually, I used to live in flat eighteen.’
    He didn’t say anything for what seemed like a long time.
    ‘I’m looking for Mrs Williams,’ I said, hoping the elabor­ation would loosen him up. ‘I just want to talk to her, or Mr Williams...’
    ‘Oh, child... You’d better come up here,’ he replied. ‘Flat six.’
    I was buzzed in.
    I almost turned and walked away, spooked by his tone of voice, but my bloody-minded need for information made me go inside. The interior was different. It may have been repainted but a stain had been left in the air that was still fresh and raw despite the years that had gone by. It was as if the scene had been replaying itself in my absence, and I was just here for another rerun.
    There were no broken syringes under my feet, and no graf­fiti on the walls, or blood on the stairs.
    I only had to go to the second floor.
    What had they done with my flat now? Burnt it? Boarded it up? Or, worse, rehoused another family in there? If there was a new family, would they even know what had happened?
    The door of flat six was ajar and he was waiting for me, peering through the gap. I recognized him and the name Angus came to mind. I didn’t remember him ever speaking to anyone, but I’d seen the face before. In fact, I think I’d rarely seen it in its entirety, only in fragments in half-open doors and curtained windows.
    ‘Oh, it really is you...’ He didn’t move as I approached.
    ‘Hey.’ I waved, unsure of what else to do. ‘Yeah, it’s me.’
    ‘Come in, come in.’
    He shuffled backwards behind the door to let me inside, totally hiding himself from sight. It crossed my mind that walking into a random strange man’s flat