Page 36 of Jessica Beam is a Hot Mess
Chapter Eleven
A well-rested woman is a Good Woman! A fruitful beauty sleep can be aided by a silk scarf around your hair, cold cream on your face and a glass of lightly warmed milk by your bedside.
Matilda Beam’sGood Woman Guide, 1959
I’ve been trying to get to sleep for the past forty minutes, and it’s just not happening. It’s still light outside, this bed is really lumpy, Mr Belding is a properly loud purrer and, quite frankly, my head is in a bit of a mess. Thinking about how to fixallthe things in your life does not make for a happy, restful night. Anxiety snakes its way through my body, igniting every nerve ending and causing my foot to tap repeatedly against the old mattress.
Man, I need a cigarette. I know I absolutely shouldn’t because it might, you know, kill me and all that. But I needsomething.
I creep out of the bed, careful not to disturb Mr Belding, who is sprawled across the pillow next to me, and grab a Marlboro out of the emergency ten in my leather jacket pocket. I pull on the skinny jeans and blue lacy top I was wearing earlier and head out into the hall. It’s silent apart from the ticking of at least three unsynchronized clocks. Peach and Grandma are probably sound asleep. Pulling the key from a mahogany wall hanger, I creep out and tiptoe down the ruby-carpeted stairs. Getting through the hall without making a sound is difficult. I dip and curve and wind my way around useless objects, being careful not to trip. I do quite a good job actually. I’m like Catherine Zeta-Jones and her sexy laser-dodging inEntrapment.
Opening up the door to the building, I descend two of the front steps and sit out on the third one, stone still warm from the sun. It’s half past ten and it’s not even dark yet. A gorgeous golden-pink glow illuminates the plush private park opposite Grandma’s house. Blimey. To live here. With a park on your front doorstep. The nearest park to me in Greater Manchester is also the hang-out of crackhead Jimmy, the local crackhead, and all his crackhead buddies.
I light up, and a minute or two later I hear the door click open behind me. I scooch over so that whoever it is can get down the steps.
‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t smoke out here,’ says a Scottish voice beside me. I turn round to see the young curly-haired guy from before. The know-it-all doctor. Exactly who I wanted to see.Not.
‘Have you come outside just to tell me that?’ I ask with an exaggerated sigh as he stands in front of me, blocking my pleasant view of the park.
‘Yes. I’m afraid so.’
‘Were you, like,watchingme out of the window or something?’
‘Um, no,’ he mumbles. ‘The clinic window is open and the dirty smell was wafting in. I couldn’t concentrate on my work.’
I stub out the cigarette underfoot. ‘Why are you still at work? Isn’t it a bit late?’
‘I’m studying for a summer school exam. Doctor Qureshi lets me use the building.
‘What exam?’
‘Well, I, ah, I will be doing a wet lab aortic dissection on a cadaveric porcine model in a few weeks and I want to get the theory down pat.’
‘Ooh. OK, that makes no sense to me, but it sounds hard.’
‘It is.’
‘Porcine … does that mean pig?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re operating on a pig?’
‘Porcine models are preferable for trainees, who are prone to making mistakes. Wouldn’t want to practise surgery on a human. At least not yet.’
‘Ew. Is the pig going to be alive?’
‘No. It’s a cadaver.’
‘Poor thing.’
He guffaws out loud as if I’ve just said something hilarious.
‘Why can’t you revise at your house?’ I ask.
He rubs his eyes. ‘My housemates are newly-weds . They’re doing what newly-weds do and it’s tough to concentrate with all their … sounds’
‘What sounds?’ I ask innocently.
