friends had probably called him whipped to his face and she was in deep. So instead of wimping out she waited her turn at a phone booth, smoking a cigarette because she was not yet broken down enough to not need a cigarette or a drink ever again. The tall woman ahead of her emerged, her face watery and joyous as though a mask had been removed and her skin was feeling air for the first time.
The telephone receiver was thick and green in Dot’s hand. The booth smelled of cigarette smoke and so did she. She pulled out her address book, which was so old and out of date that there were people in it who were no longer alive, including Eve. Loose leaves of the address book fell out into her bag as she looked for the right page. The spine was broken. She’d used it to call her mother last night – two numbers always transposed in her mind and when she tried to ring her parents she could never remember which ones they were. Michael had finally been in touch with them and Lee had passed on his number, which was scrawled now next to her parents’ in a green felt pen that had been the only thing to hand and the ink had nearly dried out, just lasting long enough to faintly record these digits, and afterwards there had been the intense satisfaction of throwing the pen and its lid in the rubbish bin without bothering to connect one with the other, there being nothing left to protect.
The old handwriting in the address book gave Dorothy pause, the receiver by her ear. Perhaps subconsciously she had known that this day would come, although that morning she had been told that there was no such thing as fate, and no stories in anybody’s lives other than the ones they invented. Maybe she had invented herself into this place. The cord coming off the receiver was covered in a flexi kind of metal coil. The square buttons were silver. No dial, no black cubed pair of activators like the sort she and Evelyn used to be able to tap to make their prank phone calls for free. Everything was greasy. There he was. Michael. She sighed, nervously – she had been breathing hugely ever since the announcement that the time had come to make this call. Her hands felt sickly, needed a shake-out. She punched in the numbers. If he’d moved again or wasn’t home, would that be a get-out clause, or would they make her take it to the next level? Part of her hoped they had some other level in mind and that this would be the skin-lifting experience of promise. Public ecstasy. But this was before she got into 5Rhythms.
The phone rang into her brother’s flat. He picked up and her gut seized. Did she hear right what they were meant to do? Or was she the only person in the world of the Program laying herself on the line? ‘Michael? It’s me. Dorothy.’
‘Dorothy.’ There was a pause. ‘Oh yeah.’
‘Um, you probably get these calls a lot but I’m doing BetterSelf . . .’
‘What?’
‘The Program. It’s a personal-growth thing.’
Another, longer pause, in which he might have been silently laughing. He finally said, ‘So what are “these calls”?’
‘Oh, we’re meant to contact someone we’ve . . .’ Could she describe their relationship as broken? Was it a rift? A falling out, or just the distance of time? ‘How are you?’
‘I’m OK.’ His voice sounded really different. Not the renewed accent of her parents but weird, like he was talking through a neck brace.
‘So, I got your number from Mum. Where are you?’
‘Friend’s place. The landlord sold my flat. I mean I was sleeping in the fucking warehouse. Until those guys screwed me and the fucking company tanked. You heard about that, right? Cos you didn’t call me. “How are you getting on, Michael, are you OK, do you need any help?” ’
Lee had told her he’d been importing Turkish carpets. She couldn’t resist: ‘I heard there was a hole in the rug business.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Could we maybe meet up?’
‘What for?’
‘Just to talk, to see each other. You’re my brother.’
‘Hang on.’ She could hear him talking to someone else. He came back on the phone and said, ‘Hang on, I’ll just be a minute.’ The other person’s voice got louder. Michael got louder too – did he say ‘You’re a fucking thief’? The background went