My name is Fay

My name is Fay - 7

Both Mary-Jane and I were quick to try to forget Jack, and continue our lives in a very similar pattern to before Mary ran off for her new life. We planned to share a rented room again, cheap and if anything happened you could just pack up and leave without anyone chasing after you. We slept at a doss house that night, though, for I was not keen to go home to my 'family' when I hadn't been home for more than five minutes at a time in the past month. It was the freest I had felt in a long time, and I wasn't ready to give that up now. The next morning, waking up after sharing a cramped, stained, smelly and dirty mattress that was strangely comfy, I had a grin as wide as it could go when Mary suggested that we go down to the market, like we did in old times. It had probably been two years at most since Mary had gone off to be a middle class housewife, but it felt like a lifetime. I wondered if we would see the people we used to when we went down in our teenage years, if we would recognize them and if they would remember us. 

It was exiting, I will admit, getting ready. It was the nervous butterflies in my tummy, but the ones that meant only good things will happen. I borrowed some of Mary's make-up that she kept hidden in her dress somewhere - no one knows apart from her, - not caring how poisonous they probably were. I could have sworn that putting belladonna in your eyes to make them bigger was illegal now, but Mary had it and I felt like going a bit crazy today. If I do have to kill myself from some product misuse, let it be one that makes me look pretty at least in the short run, rather than just destroying my mind and face from the moment I picked it up. Mary-Jane looked at me critically while I inexpertly applied some eye-thing, then sighed and did it for me, ignoring my protests. 

'You can do my hair for me, Fay, you've always been better at doing that.' She consoled, and I gave in. I had half wanted her to do it for me anyway, knowing she had the skilled practice of many years doing this every night, and she could make my eyes look like they took up half my face if she wanted to. 

I twirled loose strands of my hair between my fingers without thinking about it. It curled slightly, more towards the ends, and I knew it was one of my better features. People would always compliment me on it, saying my hair suited my name, which I guess it did in a way, especially if you use my nickname. 

Mary-Jane stepped back to examine my face, and I hoped she was pleased with her handiwork. She smiled. 

'Oh, Fay, you look so beautiful. I can see why they call you a fairy.' 

I smiled, slightly embarrassed but pleased with the compliment anyway. 

'Not as pretty as you will be when I've done your hair.' I laughed, forcing Mary to turn around while I ran my fingers through her dark, straight locks. I played around with it for a bit, liking the soft feel of it, then fastened it into a romantic bun, and pulled a few bits loose from the bun and around her face that drifted across her skin and clothes. I pulled my own hair up with a ring of elastic that I had found, then wrapped a loose strand around the base of the ponytail and pinned it there. Few people ever wore their hair like this, preferring it down or in a bun if they needed it out the way. Coupled with the shorter hairs I wore across my forehead at a slight angle, I knew I would be safe to say that no one else in London town would have hair the same as me today. I liked that, being different, as I feel like it gives me a way to escape from being stereotyped as an alcoholic prostitute just because I come from Whitechapel. 

We checked our reflections in the corroded, age spotted, shiny metal that was fixed onto the wall, and laughed as we exited the building on Hanbury Street, leaving the other hungover residents to wake up in their own time, into the greenish filtered light that entered the street on only the brightest days. I couldn't even picture what a day like this would look like in the countryside, or anywhere else, for I had never been, and I probably never would. Our feet remembered the route to our familiar market. It was still early in the day but everything had been set up and a few people milled around, most of them other storekeepers chatting to old friends and checking out competition before the day got too busy and their wives and children got bored and went off to gossip or socialise. As we exited the factory-smoke pollution of Whitechapel, I could almost feel my lungs not having to fight so hard to avoid poisoning. The market wasn't very far out of Whitechapel, but it was enough for the sunlight to penetrate more, casting areas of blinding light where it reflected off water, and the heavy smog had faded to a greenish tinge that could have been the air, or a malfunction with my eyes.  

I laughed at the pure joy of it, and Mary joined in too, dancing around in the sunlight for as long as we could before we had to head back to the murky recesses of Whitechapel, and to the evening jobs we endured because they allowed us to survive. We ignored the raised eyebrows of storekeepers, but we knew they didn't mind too much. The small smiles that the women had gave that away. I trailed off, my breath gone, and saw three boys staring at us, one of them laughing slightly and the other two with their mouths slightly open. The laughing one had a sparkle in his blue eyes that told me he wasn't laughing at me and Mary, as such. He seemed almost familiar, from the way he stood with his feet slightly closer together than his friends, to his nose and angle of his jaw. He looked almost like... 

'Ralph?' I said, more to myself than him, and I don't think even Mary heard me, but he recognised his name from the way my lips moved, and I watched as his eyes opened a little wider as he realised who I was. 

'Fay? Fay!' The first time he said my name was little more than a whisper, but when he said it again it was a shout, that carried itself to me and I felt the grin return to my face. 

'Ralph!' I shouted again, and waved like a maniac. I tugged on Mary's sleeve and she turned around from eyeing up one of the younger storekeepers, a flower seller of all. 

'Look, it's Ralph and his friends!' I consciously stopped myself from bouncing up and down, not having a clue why I was so excited or why my heart was beating faster than it normally did. 

'Oh yeah,' She laughed easily and waved, then beckoned them over with her hand, but they were already coming over. 

'I wonder who his friends are?' She mused to herself while I barely heard her and bubbled away to myself. 

'I haven't seen him for ages, do you think he'll still like me? Do you think he's courting anyone else? Is this why you wanted to come to the market today? Oh, Mary, this is so cool!' 

All of the pain and loneliness that Jack, and Mary too, to an extent, had caused me in the recent, and more distant past was forgotten as I allowed myself to sound like an over-exited teenage girl, like anything was possible at the market, in the sun that I barely ever got to see. 

Mary looked at me and tried not to laugh, and only succeeded partially. 

'I always knew you two should have gone out.' She said it with the aura of someone who knows what they were talking about, but I still said; 

'Mary, Mary? What do you mean?', Even though I knew exactly what she meant.

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I'm on an updating roll at the moment! I was a bit worried that there was too much descripiton and not enough... doing? Or whatever, haha :)

Votes and comments muchly appreiciated :3 xx