“I’m trying to shame someone who doesn’t need to be a homeless person, unlike the thousands of other poor souls in this country who don’t have a choice but to sleep rough. You think I’m mocking you. You mock them every day.”
I flinched. “Bullshit.”
“No? They don’t have a choice. You do.”
“I don’t.”
“I just offered you one.” He grabbed my hand and slapped his business card into it. “Do with it what you will.”
And then he was gone, leaving me sweating hot and cold in TGI Fridays. My legs felt like jelly and my head swam with lightness. I refused to put it down to his harsh words and instead stumbled for the booth, slumping into it. It was just the food and excitement of the day—that was all.
Still, my fingers trembled as I reached for the money he’d thrown on the table.
“Would you like the bill?”
The new voice made me clench my hands around the money in a panic that took me by surprise. I nodded at the waiter as I drew my hands under the table so the cash was out of sight. When the bill came, I counted out what we owed along with a nice tip, and I felt the burn of tears when I realized what was left.
The bastard had given me two hundred pounds. Small change to some, but it meant I wouldn’t have to worry for a few weeks about making money busking.
I hated him even more for his charity. Why give me money if he thought so little of me?
Try as I might, I couldn’t get his voice out of my head as I took the bus out of the city center. And that night as I layered up in my tent, I tucked the money into a hidden compartment in my guitar case and then pulled out a notepad I hadn’t touched since arriving in Scotland.
When everything went to shit, I’d taken off. I left everything behind and I backpacked through Europe for over a year. The whole time I’d written new music. Music that was unlike anything our band had produced. It wasn’t about looking for a new sound or a new hit. I didn’t want that life anymore. But music would always be the way I expressed myself and I’d hoped that the songs I was writing would bring me peace somehow.
They hadn’t.
I knew then if music couldn’t help me, nothing would.
So I stopped when I got to Scotland. I used the last of my money on a cheap flight from Paris to Glasgow. And for five months I’d kept singing, but I didn’t write.
My visitor’s visa was about to run out. Although I had the money from O’Dea, soon there would be nothing. No money to get home. Frankly, I didn’t want to go home.
Staring down at the notepad, at the lyrics I’d written, at a song that was too honest for me to sing while I busked, I felt an urge I hadn’t felt in months. I’d spent all my time here trying to forget, forcing all the bad stuff out so I could pretend I was someone else. Yet . . . I wanted to finish what I’d started.
After fumbling for a pen, I began frantically making changes to the lyrics. I stopped when the song was half finished, needing to hear how it sounded.
Then I opened my guitar case and pulled out my Taylor.
And I sang.
“No, I didn’t understand then
That your soul was part of mine and
When yours faded out
Mine broke down to du—”
My voice broke before I could even get the last lyric of the first verse out. I lay back in the tent, curled around my guitar, my song discarded beside me and for the first time in months, I fell asleep with tears on my cheeks.
* * *
DURING THE SUMMER THE CITY had a distinct smell, a homogenized scent that was difficult to describe until you broke it down into all its separate parts. One of those parts was hot asphalt. The summers here were nothing compared to back home but on those elusive warm days, the many buildings, people, and traffic built up the heat until the sidewalk was so warm to the touch, it gave off that distinct smell of hot concrete.
Now as the temperatures dropped, I found myself surprised at the underlying smell of wet concrete everywhere, even when it hadn’t rained for days. Scotland was damp in the fall no matter if those gray clouds overhead deigned to stay full.
It was the kind of damp cold that seeped into your bones.
The following Saturday, Killian O’Dea didn’t show up to hear me sing. I’d like to say it didn’t bother me, but I knew there had to be a string attached to the money he’d given me. I was so desperate, I’d taken it, but that didn’t make me naive. It wasn’t really kindness that had caused him to leave it. So I was on edge. Waiting. I wanted to return to being invisible. Yet my eyes searched for him beneath the brim of my fedora and I had an unpleasant restless feeling itching in my fingers and toes as I packed up for the day.
But it wasn’t Killian O’Dea himself that was the cause for the feeling. He’d merely helped unveil them. Popping open my emotions like one of those joke snakes in a can. They’d jumped out in an unraveling mess and now I couldn’t figure out how to neatly fold them back in. Instead I swept them under an imaginary rug. A lumpy, untidy rug that reminded me every day those feelings were there.
Along with a now dawning fear of approaching winter.
It really hit me the next evening.
After a fitful sleep of hugging myself and attempting and failing to keep my teeth from chattering, I got up on Monday morning feeling like hell. Even with the money O’Dea had given me, I was hungry. The goal was to make that money last as long as possible, so I ate cheaply and sometimes sporadically. That meant I was used to the gnawing hunger pangs and the constant ache in my stomach when I woke up. But that morning it was the queasiness of a lack of sleep mixed with the damp chill in my bones that really killed.
Despite the low temperatures during the night, the sun was shining as I wearily packed up my tent. Birds twittered in the trees, a sound I usually loved waking up to but today made me irritated with envy. Those damn birds seemed so happy while I couldn’t be any more miserable if I tried.
Knowing I needed to get some heat in me, I headed for the swim center and grabbed a hot shower. Feeling marginally better, it wasn’t until I was getting dressed and I saw the tampons in my backpack that I faltered.
My pulse picked up a little as I tried to work out the date.
What the . . .
Hurrying to dress, I got myself together and stopped at reception on my way out to collect my guitar. “Thanks. Can I ask what date it is today?”
“It’s the 24th.”
Shit.
My period was over a month late. How had I not noticed this?
Feeling my skin prickle with worry, I tried not to let it show. “Do you have a scale that I could use?”
“If you go back into the dressing room, you’ll see scales in the corner right at the far end of the room, at the last row of lockers.”
Nodding my thanks, I hurried back into the dressing room, my pulse racing. Glad it was quiet this early in the morning, I shucked out of all my stuff, kicked off my shoes, and got up on the scale.
Despite an average height of five foot six, I’ve always looked petite because I have such small shoulders, a slender waist, and average boobs. If it weren’t for my fuller hips and ass, I would’ve felt like a little girl.
I was losing my hips and ass. They weren’t completely gone but it was getting to that point.
The weight on the scales was not as bad as I’d been anticipating. I wasn’t a doctor but I didn’t reckon I was dangerously underweight. But I’d stopped getting my period.
If it wasn’t my weight—and I wasn’t sure it wasn’t—then was it malnutrition? Was it anemia? Was it all the walking? Hell, I didn’t know.
All I knew was that if I didn’t have my period, there was something wrong.
Out of what felt like nowhere, a sob burst up from my chest before I could stop it and I grabbed my stuff, fleeing to the sanctuary of a changing cubicle where I slapped my hand across my mouth to muffle the sound.
Suddenly I could see Mandy and Ham, both waif-like, unkempt, and so obviously not taking care of themselves. I thought I was above them. That sleeping rough wasn’t affecting my ability to care for myself.
But it was, wasn’t it.
What the hell was I doing to myself?
I had to stop this.
But how?
I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t . . .