Ocado sent me a 20% discount voucher in the same month that David died. It felt like fate was telling me never to go out again, so I didnât. Itâs not the grief, I joked, itâs the means. He left me the flat and some very successful investments â and honestly when you can have a boneless organic chicken thigh delivered straight to your door, why risk getting your hair wet?
He loved this flat. He used to say he loved me, Barbra Streisand and the flat, mostly in that order, but Barbra and I were interchangeable if Iâd forgotten to put the rubbish out or if she really hit that high D5 at the end of A Piece of Sky. Itâs a recording, Iâd say, she hits the same note every time. Yes, heâd say, but sometimes I just feel it more.
The flat is on the top floor of Ben Jonson House on the northern edge of the Barbican estate in London. It has two rooms, side by side, each with a barrel ceiling. From the inside the rounded white roofs make you think you have more space than you really do. From the outside I like to imagine it looks like two sleeping giants cuddled up under a duvet.
David started renting the flat when he was studying at the Guildhall School of Music, or Downstairs as he always called it. When the owner sold up in the early nineties David had to buy the place because heâd filled it with too many records to move. 1423 records line an entire wall of the living room in orange crate shelves. They are mostly original cast recordings of musicals in all the languages of the countries he visited. Only sixty-seven of them are by Barbra, but she does have her own crate. I got my own crate in 2006. Well, it was a drawer. David was twenty years older than me and everyone assumed I was more in love with his south-facing balcony in Zone 1 than with him, but I would have moved into one of his orange crates under the Hammersmith flyover if heâd asked. Me, David and 1423 records living happily ever after. Or, in the end, about twelve years.
The Barbican estate was built over the wreckage World War II left of this part of London. David loved that it was someoneâs vision of optimal living realised on such a large scale, that from a bombsite they thought they could rescue the future. His balcony overlooks the entire complex, the terraces and tower blocks, the mewses and the museum, the Arts Centre and its plazas. From that angle all the odd shaped buildings and covered walkways form an insane Escher print. When Iâd go out there to water the plants he would wrap his arms around me from behind, his chin resting on my shoulder, and let his hand trace a path for some new adventure across the cityscape. With all there is, heâd sing in my ear, why settle for just a piece of sky?
Even then I used to think it all depended on the piece of sky you were looking at.
I havenât been out on the balcony since he died. Iâve barely opened the curtains. Half of the plants dropped their leaves over the side like desperate passengers jumping from a sinking ship. The half that couldnât reach the edge just curled up on the floor. David left me the flat and the money and the records and the plants, but do you need me to tell you he took away more than he left? Because I canât be bothered to go into it â actually, that sums it up: David died and I couldnât be bothered anymore.
When anyone remarked on the twenty years between us, and anyone often did, David would rush his hand to his cheek as though heâd been slapped. I was born on the 26th June, he was born on the 27th. There were nineteen years and 364 days between us. It never mattered to me, but since other people seemed so keen on numbers he liked to make sure they got it right.
On my birthday, the first thing heâd do was fling the covers off and crow about how young he felt. On his, the morning after, heâd play the ancient crone. Of all the time we had together, those twenty-four hours in between were often our happiest.
Sometimes we never left the flat. Sometimes we never left the bed. Once, on the day I turned thirty and heâd failed to cook the chicken for long enough, we spent most of it in the bathroom. He claimed it was because heâd heated it on the dying embers of his forties. If you can find a man who makes you laugh after giving you food poisoning, heâs the one.
Davidâs warmth evaporated time. Today, those same twenty-four hours yawn with their lack of promise. I am now thirty-eight and Iâve woken up alone in our bed for nearly a year. The same bed that it felt so decadent to stay in as the turning of the world notched up another number for me then him. Thereâs nothing decadent about staying in bed all day when you have nowhere else to be. Or nobody to share it with.
I get up at 7am and shower. I realised quite early on that it was easier to get rid of time at the start of the day. Also, for all of the talk about optimal living, the walls between the Barbicanâs flats are thin enough that I know when my bedroom-side neighbour Bianca has had an overnight guest â because I hear her shower going twice, not because sheâs a screamer (though the guests sometimes are). With the noise of her, possibly plus one, and Pete and Soph on the living-room side all getting ready for work in the morning thereâs really no point in trying to lay in.
I eat breakfast and get on with my Big Job of the day. Thereâs only ever one. If you donât work or even leave the two rooms you live in, your To Do list is minimal. The art is to spread it out over the course of the week: one day for cleaning, one day for washing, changing the bed gets a whole day of its own because it usually takes everything I have. One day I throw things in a casserole dish. Everything tastes the same anyway and one bucket of stew will last me all week. Thatâs unless Soph is away and Pete comes over. But if it runs out I usually eat cereal for dinner. Or nothing.
By 9am everyone in bothering radius will have left the building. If I put on one of Davidâs records Iâm either feeling brave or the exact opposite. Usually I stick to some quiet, measurable task: today I will knit fifty rows of this scarf or today I will read two-hundred pages of Persuasion or today I will open at least three of the letters that continue to get forwarded for David and try to forgive the writer for existing in a world where he is still alive.
At 6pm I heat up my dinner. If any of my neighbours are going to knock to check that I havenât made their lives awkward by killing myself, itâs usually now. If they donât, I put on Davidâs ancient headphones that are attached by a spiralling wire to a radiogram thing on a shelf above the bed. I lay down and listen to a crackling Asian radio station that could be broadcasting cricket scores or prayers, but that completely drowns out the sounds of Pete and Soph making their evening meal together or Bianca laughing into her phone on the balcony as she lights another cigarette. Iâd take the sounds of endless morning ablutions over their easy early evening chatter and hopefulness.
Itâs meditative, listening to a language you donât understand. After long enough you can hear the music in it. Music that doesnât remind you of anyone.
He wouldâve been fifty-eight tomorrow.
My dad and I get on fine, thanks for asking, though we joke that he threw me out at eighteen. He just wanted me to want more than the generic comfort of middle class Bristol. He stays because it makes mum happy and he loves her. Heâs a doctor who wishes heâd been a sculptor or a fashion designer or a maker of anthropomorphic miniature ceramics â it all depends on what documentary heâs watching at the time. I was quite happy pulling up weeds and laying turf for the housewives of Clifton Village, though I was well aware that I didnât want to lay anything else for them. I applied to art college for him really. And, fair enough, to sleep with someone other than the barman at the Queenshilling. Â
My mum was more comfortable with my lack of ambition. She called it being an old soul. When they dropped me off at Ravensbourne she gave me a backgammon set and enough tinned soft fruit for a lifetime of untroubled dentures. Following a succession of diabolical paintings and haircuts, a Duke of Edinburgh Award in navigating my way home from a different part of London every other morning - Â before the advent of Google Maps - and absolutely no backgammon, I graduated and got a job as an estate agent.
The most creative thing I was doing was arranging the pictures of other peopleâs homes in the window. I told my parents I was having a fabulous time and they believed me. I told myself that too, but it was less convincing. Â
Pete is on my balcony sweeping up rotting leaves and quite a few of Biancaâs discarded cigarette butts. He does this whenever he comes over for dinner since I never go out there now. He has a broom in one hand and his phone in the other, into which I hear him shouting to his wife Soph that heâs about to eat one of Dollyâs famous one-pot wonders. I am Dolly. I am microwaving a five bean chilli I made using only two kinds of beans and the entire last jar of fucks I had to give. Iâve barely moved from the sofa in five hours, but have only been trying to ignore Peteâs questions for the last fifteen minutes.
Pete was already Davidâs neighbour when I moved into the flat. At the time I had a quiff that my friends used to say was maintained by all the comments that flew over my head. I was twenty-five, Iâd been passed around Londonâs vibrant gay Soho like a tray of unwanted cakes and I was finally getting bored of butching it up and dumbing it down. Maybe itâs different now that kids have to build a personal brand online before theyâre old enough to drink, but back when I was fresh meat it wasnât what came out of your mouth that guys were interested in. I met David in the toilets at the Green Carnation â donât worry, it wasnât as seedy as it sounds. We were standing side by side looking in the mirror wearing matching Joe 90 glasses; me tall and dark, him short and bald. He said we looked like Dolce and Gabbana. I looked down at my designer-imposter daps and his wide-fit loafers and said we were more like Dolcis and Garden Centre. When he laughed it felt like someone had heard my real voice for the first time. I came back to the flat with him that night and four months later I lived here.
Dolce having instantly become Dolcis then became Dolly. Thatâs how he introduced me to Pete. Say hello to Dolly. Pete had been a DJ on the rave scene in the early nineties and still shouted everything inches from your ear like he was trying to be heard over Josh Winkâs Higher State of Consciousness. He smelled so straight and alien, like weed and the hot plastic of a Gameboy. It was the forbidden smell of someoneâs older brotherâs bedroom and on reflex I stayed silent in case I got kicked out. He looked into the tops of my boxes and asked me if I played backgammon then, with no response from me, reached in and pulled out a Prodigy CD. He waved it triumphantly in Davidâs face, delighted to finally have a neighbour who might play something other than Color Me Barbra through the wall. David was unfazed. Neither then nor at any time since has there been a CD player in the flat.
Now of course we can instantly play whatever we want to hear on our phones, but Pete and I are both at an age where eating two bean chilli at Prodigy speed could cause intestinal woe for days. He comes in from the balcony and selects a record to put on. Itâs Je mâappelle Barbra, the original 1966 Colombia LP. Side two, track six: Iâve Been Here.
We were going to knock on your birthday but the lights were out, says Pete. And on his too. Then, after a deep breath, he tells me that Bianca has told Soph who has told him that sheâs been doing some PR for the promoters who put on summer concerts in Hyde Park and that sheâs heard that this year Barbra Streisand will be doing one of them and she could get us all tickets and we should go. VIP entry, away from the crowds. It will be the first time sheâs performed in the UK for years and might be the last. David wouldnât have missed it. David wouldâve been there in a Fanny Brice sailor suit.
Over on the record player Barbra is assuring us that she is not a frightened dove.
The record finishes and thereâs only static to fill the silence. Pete takes our half-empty bowls and puts them in the sink, where he stands as the whispering record turns and turns and turns and turns.
I need to go Dolly, he says. And I donât know if I can go without you.
David and Pete had both done a lot of drugs, though it was never part of Davidâs work like it was for Pete. David travelled â heâd been a singer and then an internationally renowned vocal coach â but when he was home, he was home. Ask Pete if he ended up with a drug problem because itâs hard for a DJ to draw a line between his professional and private life, heâll tell you that he doesnât know because he never even tried. He was having a brilliant time and getting paid a lot of money. He got a mortgage for the flat next to Davidâs in 1999 with the advances from a series of Millennium gigs that he wouldnât end up playing. Instead he went on what he now calls the Bender Of Destiny. His bookings disappeared. He went from sucking MDMA off a modelâs nipple to sucking fag ash from the footwells of Mondeos at a car valeting service. He could barely afford enough speed to get him through the weekend. When he finally got so desperate that he sold his speakers, David knocked on his door. This was years before I'd met David, years before Pete met Soph. At the time they may not have had much in common except a very thin wall, but David was probably the only neighbour in the world who had a problem if you werenât playing music. Peteâs existence had descended to skirting board level and the flat was basically empty. The highest vantage point was a stack of unopened post. Recently Pete must have fallen off or into or in front of something or someone and there was a dried trail of blood weaving back and forth between the two filthy airless rooms. David sat down on the floor next to Pete anyway and put his arms around him whilst he cried.
David took Pete next door and ran him a bath. He washed his clothes and his bedding. He cleaned Peteâs flat, he cooked for him. He sat with him every night, made him tea whilst he opened all the terrifying post, sorted out his payment plans. He helped him find some furniture, a job at a friendâs recording studio, a reason to go on. He played him the 1964 Original Cast Recording of Funny Girl and the 1970 soundtrack to On A Clear Day You Can See Forever and every single studio album Barbra had ever released. When you can afford your own speakers again we can listen to what you want, David would say, until then letâs have something ageless and evergreen.
Pete gave the eulogy at Davidâs funeral. I couldnât speak. He said that David had saved his life. He chose all the music too. People kept thanking me afterwards and telling me how perfect the songs were. I tried to say that Pete had chosen everything but he said it didnât matter. He took me home and said I didnât need to explain anything to anyone. I didnât need to see anyone or speak to anyone if I didnât want to.
Pete takes Je mâappelle Barbra off of the record player, returns it to its sleeve and its place on the orange crate shelves.
Thereâs seven months until the gig, he tells me, weâll start small. He opens the balcony door and steps outside, then he turns back and holds out his hand for me to join him.
