rocker switch in the dimness and switched on the lights. Then I stood there a moment and looked around.
Well, no.
A muffled knocking frenzy, and I unlocked the apartment door to find a narrow, dark corridor that smelled of moldy carpet and old cooking, and turned the lock on the outside door.
Daisy was in before I’d stepped back. In fact, she barreled straight into me, and my arms went around her, my palms against the smooth skin of her narrow back, that dip at the base of a woman’s spine where her waist curved in and her bum curved out. She softened against me for about half a second and held on herself, then stepped back and said, “You scared me to death.”
“Yeh?” I went over to the window for our shirts and tossed her hers. Mine had a couple little rips in it. I pulled it on anyway and tugged it down. Daisy was staring at me, but I couldn’t tell why.
Oh. She’d been scared. I said, “How d’you imagine I’d have felt knowing you were doing it?”
“It’s. My. Flat,” she said, pulling on her own shirt, which I’d have watched more closely, but her brother and sisters were watching me and looking pretty shocked, so maybe better not. “In other words, my responsibility. You could have broken your leg.”
The girls were following us with their eyes as if this were a tennis match. Dorian was, too. Dorian, I thought, was definitely a spectator. That wasn’t kind of me, maybe. Too bad. I said, “I didn’t break my leg, though. Have some faith, woman. And not much of a flat, is it? This is the escape pod? Emphasis on ‘pod’?”
Daisy said, “It’s not exactly flash, no, but …”
“Not exactly flash? No, it’s not. It’s not exactly not horrible, either. I’d better get your window fixed, because you only have two in the whole place. Once I cover it up, you’ll have only half as much completely inadequate light as you did before. You’re all going to get scurvy from the lack of sunlight.”
“You try getting something on a week’s notice that’s walking distance from the school and the supermarket,” she said. “And from my work, by the way, as I don’t have a car now. Since somebody pushed me into the river. And you don’t get scurvy from lack of sunlight. Scurvy’s lack of Vitamin C. You get a Vitamin D deficiency from lack of sunlight.”
“Exactly,” I said. “A vitamin deficiency. That’s what you’re all going to get.”
“He pushed you into the river?” Dorian asked. “And you went to stay with him anyway?”
“I didn’t—” I started to say.
“What’s your point?” Daisy asked me. “Fruitful and Obedience don’t care that the place isn’t that nice.”
“I think it’s very nice,” Obedience said. “It’s got a couch and everything, and we’ve got our own cooker and fridge! And a TV. Isn’t that a TV? Or is it a computer?”
“It’s a TV,” Daisy said.
Obedience had already headed into the back of the flat. “And a bathroom!” she called out. “And a separate bedroom for you and me, Fruitful! With a closet! Come see!”
“I can’t,” Fruitful said. “My ankle.” She’d taken off her shoe and was resting her bandaged foot on the coffee table. The table was all right, if you went for “basic.” The rest of the place wasn’t.
If they’d been bats, it would’ve been perfect, because it was a cave. Or a home for the mole people, maybe, because it was grotty as hell, with a floor so sloping that a marble would have been gathering speed all the way across. Under the other of the exactly-two windows for four rooms, a single stretch of scratched green-laminate benchtop ran between the dented, dull stainless-steel sink and the white cooker with some of the paint rubbed off and probably only two working burners, topped by a few cabinets of the absolutely cheapest material known to man and a refrigerator that had seen better days. That would be the kitchen. The two metal-framed windows looked out onto that alley, and the flat had no baseboards and no trim, which was probably because they’d never have managed right angles.
As a builder, I was offended by all of it. It was technically clean and freshly painted, though. That would be Daisy. I could see her in the tiny kitchen space with its torn lino, scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees, scouring the oven that had probably held the burnt-on remains of a thousand student dinner