Twelve. Vanessa Jones

Copyright

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      Fourth Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by Flamingo 2000

      Copyright © Vanessa Jones 2000

      Vanessa Jones asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9780006551942

      Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008228415

      Version: 2016–11-08

Praise

      From the reviews for Twelve:

      ‘Lily is a twentysomething woman living in London with a dull job and no man. Lily’s confessional narrative tracks her confusion, her sense that she should be somewhere else, someone else. In an effort to escape the “steep rock face” of a working week, she seeks respite with weekends in the country, parties and a date with a stranger. But she can’t escape the feeling that there’s something missing, that she’s a bit-part actor in her own life … As Twelve progresses, Jones layers each chapter with a different character’s voice: old friends, a down-to-earth neighbour and Lily’s date, Colin. There are sensitive, incisive observations and a knack with words that twists the imagination. By asking the unexpected, this first novel is unsettling, unusual and perceptive.’ Amazon.co.uk

      ‘Debut novelist Vanessa Jones uses her vividly realised group of self-absorbed twentysomethings to make some keen observations about urban isolation and longing.’ The List

      ‘A zippy, fresh first novel’ The Voice

Dedication

      For Joyce and Noël

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

One

Two

Three

       Four

       Five

       Six

       Seven

       Eight

       Nine

       Ten

       Eleven

       Twelve

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       About the Publisher

one

      Every Friday night we rehearse the desertion of the city. Its pull becomes a push – a heartbeat pumping us out – to its limits and beyond. Trouble is we’ve got varicose veins. Or gout – look at this road. Stasis. We’re always stuck on this spooky bit of road, and it is always the same. Once it must have been a normal slice of quiet suburbia, but now most of the houses are boarded up: sold to the department of transport, bought by the department of road expansion, leased to the drivers of these cars.

      One resident in every ten is hanging on. And they have painted their cause on the boards of their neighbours, their rantings against the drivers and their exhausts, dirt, noise. But I have only ever seen this in evidence and never the protesters themselves. ‘Time is suspended here,’ I say to Edward, who’s driving. ‘The anti-car campaigners always in precisely this state of invisible outrage, the cars in exactly this state of non-movement.’ Every moment is a freeze-frame in an action movie – it is a sculpture, a still life.

      He doesn’t answer because he’s considering his next move in a word game we’re playing, a meaningless game, the way to win it is not to come to the end of it, its only point is to pass the time. ‘How apt,’ I think, and laugh. I say ‘Everything’s a metaphor,’ and then, ‘– I love statements like that which prove your point.’

      Edward says, ‘You talk absolute shit, do you know that, Lily?’

      ‘The car is the city’s metaphor for freedom,’ I say, ‘its get-out clause’ – but once in, freedom is lost. We have no choice but to go with this not-so flow. Breathing in. People use this gas to kill themselves!

      ‘T-H-M,’ says Edward.

      Country weekends. Weekends away. ‘I’m going away for the weekend.’ Maybe one day no one will live in the country. Perhaps one day it will be populated only from Friday evenings till Monday mornings and the city in hush.

      ‘Your