C: Brighton, 1994-2001

After graduating, I went back to my parents' house in Croydon for a
few months. We weren't getting on, and I desperately wanted to move.
Although I'd enrolled on a TEFL course (to teach English to foreign
speakers), I didn't want to go abroad. One afternoon I took a fast
train to Brighton and followed up an ad in the local paper. It came to
nothing, and I lost my nerve.

On a rainy night in November I left London for good. My first address
was 1, Guildford Road. It was opposite the railway station, and the
Innocent Bystander Caf?. I could hear the announcements from my room,
which was on the top floor. I can still recall fragments of my first
night there: me, struggling to fit my key in the front door; later,
looking at my face in the bathroom mirror, as if at a stranger's; the
broken lock on my bedroom door, which I never did get fixed.

The landlord had a room and ran a business selling second-hand
computers downstairs. I didn't know that when I signed the lease and so
almost instantly I felt that I had made a mistake. I didn't look for a
job, not seriously, but helped out in a charity shop on the London
Road. I read a lot, and wrote, in caf?s or the public library.

It wasn't like the shared houses I'd known as a student. Everyone kept
to themselves, until in January a new lodger came. He was a funny
little man from down the coast. He had an obese girlfriend who thought
I was after him, but it was the other way round. I was waiting for my
housing benefit cheque to come through; then I could get out. One day I
overheard the landlord in conversation with a friend.

"So she hasn't paid you anything?" his friend asked.

"Mmm-hmm." They both laughed.

"You should make her pay for it ? some other way. Do you think she
would do that?"

Then one Sunday evening in February, the little man had all his pals
round from the fairground. I could hear voices in his room, which was
right below mine. I heard him saying "She's alone up there, no
boyfriend." A man replied, "So what? Leave her alone, mate. Forget it."
I put on my coat and ran out of the house. I went to the station and
called Helen, a new friend. She told me to come over.

As luck would have it, his cheque came the next day. I spent the
remainder of my overdraft on a deposit for a bedsit in Seven Dials,
moving in later that week.

+++

My next address was at Compton Avenue, a tree-lined street of
townhouses, once elegant no doubt, now ruthlessly divided into flats.
It was the prettiest road I'd ever lived on, and I liked to look out at
it from my bay window.

As bedsits go it wasn't too bad; large-sized, carpeted, furnished with
a bed and duvet, chest of drawers, desk and chairs, and a built-in
wardrobe. There were a few cupboards, a fridge, sink and water-heater,
a Baby Belling and a two-bar fire. I paid for electricity on a 50p
meter, and ran my baths on the top floor of the house. I decorated my
room with pictures cut from books; a still of Clark Gable and Marilyn
Monroe, eating breakfast in a scene from 'The Misfits', was stuck
somewhere near the oven.

Steps raised the house above ground, and mine was the first room inside
the front door. All the other tenants were men in their fifties and
sixties. My closest neighbour was a timid, bald man who howled to
himself every night. Apart from this, the house was generally
silent.
I was more settled, but lonely. On giro days (every other Saturday) I
might go to a club with Helen. If not, I'd go to the cinema, a play or
the pub if a band was on. But generally I stayed at home or went on
long walks by myself.

Then it got cold and I had to get busy. I started going to writers'
workshops, then went on a welfare rights course and became an adviser
for a while. In December I gave up my flat, and stayed for a month with
some friends from the art college. It was fun, but not for long. An old
friend from Croydon offered me a room in a shared house. So I returned
to Seven Dials, the Hove side this time.

+++

Seven Dials is a suburb on a hill, looking down to the sea. It's about
ten minutes' walk from central Brighton. Like much of the town it is
dominated by flat-dwellers, who tend to come and go. The yuppies and
hippies live side by side with the addicts and unemployables in an
uneasy truce.

I moved to a house on the corner of Stanford Road. My flatmates were
Steve, Simon, Zoe, Gareth and Claire. Within months they had all gone,
except Simon. Vanessa came, and stayed until after I too left. I lived
there for about 15 months. That summer Simon went to Africa and while
he was away there were others, like Dan and Richard.

My bedroom was on the ground floor, next to the lounge and the hall
with the BT payphone that constantly rang. It was rarely peaceful, but
I liked the company. For a while I taught English to tourists. I sorted
Christmas cards in the Post Office. I carried on doing voluntary work
at the Unemployed Centre, and went to my writing class, where a small
group of us wrote on a random subject for half an hour, then read it
out.

An old college friend, Vanessa J, moved to Brighton and we'd spend
Friday nights at a pub in the North Laine known as the Kenny. It was
always crowded, dreadlocks and piercings were uniform (I had neither).
Or else I'd stay home and read tarot cards with my artist friend
Ottilie. I started a novel, 'Wicked Baby'.

After a year in Stanford Road I was restless again. The landlady's son,
Nick, was living with us. He was 18 and a student; I didn't like him
much, nor he me I expect. I needed a bit more privacy. Everyone I knew
wanted to travel. I couldn't afford another flat on my own, so I
started applying for jobs teaching English abroad. I really wanted to
go to Eastern Europe.

Then in February 1997, I fell in love with a man called Andy. He was
thirty-two, eight years older than me. I met him one weekend at the
Kenny. He was tall, with blue eyes and a shaved head. He worked at a
bingo hall in lived in a squat on Gloucester Street, near the pub. That
night we went to a party, then back to his flat for a smoke. A few days
later he came to a poetry reading I was involved with. Then on Friday
we met again. I went back to his flat and stayed the night. After that
I never really went home again.

At the same time I was offered a job at the Caledonian School in
Prague. I'd never lived abroad before and it seemed too good to miss.
By then, however, I didn't want to be without Andy. He decided to get
some overtime and join me there as soon as possible. I arranged for my
black tomcat, Gomez, to stay with a friend. That March I left Brighton
for the first time - there would be other attempts - in a mad rush, and
very much in love.

+++

We returned to Brighton just two months later, and moved into another
squat on Gloucester Street. It was a small terraced street, leased from
the council by a co-op as short-life housing. The accommodation was due
to be demolished and, as the lease had run out, the tenants were
staying there until the end. We stayed on a top floor - our room was
littered with bottles of piss left behind by the couple who'd lived
there before. Downstairs were three crusties, usually smashed on
Special Brew, and their dogs.

The toilet was blocked, so when I woke up one night in need of a wee I
had to venture into the back yard. There were no lights and so I begged
Andy to come with me. We stood in the yard while the dogs barked behind
the door. I quickly dried up.

"I must go" I wailed. "But I can't!"

After a few days of this a friend, Katy, took pity on us and we stayed
at her flat for the rest of the week. An old acquaintance was moving
out of her shared house and before long we had a room of our own. The
house was on Baden Road, in Bevendean.

It was the furthest I'd been from the centre - about half an hour's
walk. It was a different world, settled, less frantic. Families lived
there. Our bedroom was painted purple, and the roof leaked. We shared a
kitchen with a hippy called Scott, who wanted to go to India, and
Jamie, who worked for American Express.

Shortly after moving in, I found out I was pregnant. It was a shock at
first. It seemed that things were changing faster than I could deal
with. But I warmed to it, and was excited by the prospect of having a
son or daughter.

The first ultrasound was in July, at Brighton General. I was three
months into the pregnancy, tired and sick. I remember how hot it was
that afternoon as we walked up Albion Hill, how I whined to Andy. I had
the last appointment of the day. Before us was a woman accompanied by
two of her children. Finally we went into the darkened room and I lay
on the couch, watching the screen distractedly. I wondered if we'd find
out what sex the baby was.

"I'm sorry" the nurse said after a few moments. "The baby's heart isn't
beating."

We were shown into a room and I drank water from a polystyrene cup as I
cried. The next day I had another scan which confirmed that my child
died two weeks previously. So I had a D&;amp;C - an operation to
scrape the dead foetus from the womb. My mother, who had disapproved of
the pregnancy, visited me in hospital.

+++

The house on Baden Road was being repossessed and everyone else had
jumped ship. We went to Brighton Housing Trust, a charity that helped
us to find a new flat to rent; a studio on Grand Parade, the main
stretch to the seafront. It was unfurnished, a large room with a bay
window facing out to the traffic and the Gloucester club just opposite.
There was also a small kitchen, and a bathroom in the hall.

The floor was tiled grey, the walls red. Slowly we filled the flat with
furniture from second-hand shops and skips. I remember a Bonnie and
Clyde poster behind the sofa. We lived on the first floor. A single mum
and her daughter were in the basement flat; I never knew her but got to
know her taste in music (R&;amp;B) very well. Marcus lived below us.
He was a posh lad in thrall to the Brighton party scene. On the second
floor was Kirsty, a woman in her thirties, and her young twins.

In early 1998 she moved out and we gave our landlord's number to Andy's
friend, Darin, who shared the flat with a girl called Sandra. This
worked out quite well at first. But Darin had a hectic social life,
with a constant stream of visitors. The fire alarm was next to the
timelight, just inside the front door, and often rang out in the middle
of the night. Then a group of junkies squatted the disused shop next
door, setting fire to it every couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, I continued to work on my novel. I had a desk with a
typewriter in the kitchen, next to the cat's litter tray. (We didn't
get a catflap as we weren't supposed to keep pets. But Gomez managed to
get out and about via a circuit of roofs and high walls.) I took a
computer course while at Grand Parade, and read more than a hundred
books. Andy some leafleting for a furniture store, and helped out in
the office at Brighton Housing Trust.

By September we were making plans to move again. I wanted a quiet life,
away from clubs and drugs. I wanted children. We couldn't afford to
live outside town, so I got in touch with an old friend in Lancaster.
We left Brighton again as winter set in, but by summer we were back
again.

+++

It was late June, 1999, when we returned and stayed for a few days with
Vanessa J, who I'd known since college - a long-lasting friendship for
me. She was living by herself in a flat at Preston Park. How at home
she seemed in these leafy, posh surroundings. She was no longer the
party girl I'd known.

We once again went to Brighton Housing Trust, but a property boom had
begun and places were scarce. The weather was good, so we borrowed a
tent and slept for a few more days in a field at Newhaven. Finally we
signed for a new tenancy in Hove.

Our new home was an attic flat on Hartington Villas, between Hove
station and the park. It was a staid, middle-class area, despite the
calling cards in the phoneboxes. Our neighbours were a gay yuppie
called Paul, and a young couple, one of whom was a postman. Inside our
door was a flight of stairs leading to the lounge-cum-kitchen, with a
bedroom behind and a toilet and shower at the back. The flat was
carpeted with venetian blinds, a fridge and an oven.

In October we got married. The wedding was at Hove Town Hall, followed
by a lunch at the Hogshead on Church Road for nearly twenty guests.
Later on we met up with more friends on the Palace Pier, ending the
night at The Gloucester, near our old flat at Grand Parade. It was a
happy day for everyone, a pleasant surprise for my mum who had been
horrified by the notion of a civil marriage and - worse - a pub
reception.

It seemed to me that Brighton was changing. Bars and restaurants
appeared and vanished almost daily. The Kenny, where I met Andy, had
closed down. On New Year's Eve we went down to the beach to toast the
millennium with thousands of blissful strangers. Then in February I
learned I was pregnant.

We had been trying for a baby for nearly two years. I was delighted but
also scared of losing another child. As the pregnancy continued I
relaxed and enjoyed it. My son, Joe, was born on September 16, 2000.
Soon our tiny flat was overrun with baby equipment, and we were
constantly inventing ever-more radical storage solutions.

The walls were damp and had to be repainted every few weeks. Our names
were on the housing register, but with the council selling off
properties, we were considered to be low priority.

One morning we were watching the local news on TV, when an item came up
about Brighton Housing Trust, who had linked up with a national housing
association to offer accommodation in the north of England.

We decided to look into it, and in March 2001 we were offered a
two-bedroom terraced house in Derby. It was an assured tenancy, much
more than I could have hoped for down south. And so we left for good.
We still go to Brighton sometimes, on daytrips when I'm visiting my
parents in London. But I don't know anyone there anymore. The town has
changed, or maybe I have. I don't belong there now.