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CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_6a69d701-74a6-57d5-b189-43ba600888a4)
In death, my father finally smiled. He was still warm when I left him the first time, his skin still soft, cheeks flushed. The blood pooled in the sawdust under his neck, tiny woodchips floating, dancing with one another, drawn together into little snowflake patterns that mimicked the ones still melting into my coat.
I knelt over him, searching his eyes for a flicker of life. The first and only time this strong, proud man would look up at me—his last chance to look at me at all—and yet still unable to truly look at me.
In those few moments, I saw the full range of his emotions pass across his face. The pain of betrayal. The regret of self-inflicted failure. Perplexity at the fascinations of a small boy. Frustration at the demands for attention. Disappointment, anger and loathing. Fear.
After breakfast, I returned and sat beside him, shivering for hours on end, watching the blood congeal and his face wax over. Around midday, the snow on the roof became top-heavy and slid to the ground, startling me. Every now and then a curious vulpine nose snuffled along the gap beneath the door. Otherwise, I had only the silence and the cold for company.
By nightfall he was cool to the touch, his fingers curled into rigid claws, and my hunger got the better of me.
I stumbled back through the garden to the warmth of the house, praying all the way that I’d find my dinner in the oven, my mother there to make sure I ate my vegetables before she tucked me into bed with the promise that tomorrow, everything would be just fine. But I’d seen the look in her eyes when she’d kissed me goodbye that morning, a life and sparkle that I’d never seen there before. Deep down, as I’d watched her grab her bags and sail out of the house, leaving me alone with my porridge, I’d known this exit was different from all the others. This one felt final.
I did the only thing I knew how. I gorged myself on shoo-fly pie and waited for someone to find me. Funny thing is, they never really did.
* * *
Preheat the oven to 260 degrees centigrade.
Juice six oranges; zest two of the rinds and roughly chop the rest. Take two medium-size fillets from the bird of your choosing and make an incision in each. Insert equal measures of the chopped rind and place the whole ensemble in a baking tray with half an inch of water. Bake in the oven until the skin is golden brown and lightly crisped, then turn it down to 150. It’s going to take about an hour.
While that’s cooking, take your zest and the freshly squeezed juice and pop them in a pan along with two-thirds of a cup of sugar. Place the mixture over a medium-to-high heat and reduce it until you’re left with about a quarter of the volume. Throw in a tablespoon of bitters, and set the pan aside.
Boil two cups of chicken stock in a separate pan, then add the orange mixture and simmer it for ten more minutes.
When the meat is done, drain the fat from the baking tray and place the tray on the stove. Pour a cup of Grand Marnier into the tray and cook off the alcohol. Make sure you’ve got a wooden spoon to hand as you will need to scrape the bottom of the tray almost continuously. Next, pour a cup of the orange sauce you made earlier into the tray and cook it for a minute or so.
Finally, remove the orange rinds from the steaks and combine the orange sauce with the remaining juices from the baking tray. Serve with a simple accompaniment of new potatoes and runner beans, et voilà. Sarà l’orange.
I built my garage large enough to comfortably accommodate a full-size van and three cars. An automatic climate-control system maintains a constant temperature of sixty degrees Fahrenheit and minimizes humidity. Twin reinforced canopy doors are operated by remote control, which utilizes a double rolling-code system to ensure maximum peace of mind. I have three transmitters; I keep one on my keychain, and the spares are in a locked box in one of the kitchen cupboards, along with a collection of souvenir door keys amassed over time. The key to the box is on my keychain. Note to self.
The stairs leading down to the basement are accessed via a cupboard, or more specifically the false back thereof, which is lined with lipped shelves containing half-empty paint cans and other objects disinclined to topple when disturbed, and which opens at the flick of a concealed catch into the void between the outer and false inner walls to the rear of the garage. The steps are covered with a heavy-duty nylon cut-pile carpet, mulberry in color with a crisp multipoint stipple-effect pattern, perfect for camouflaging a vast range of dark stains. It’s certificated to all European flammability and antistatic standards for office applications, and is Scotchgard-protected to prevent ingraining. There isn’t an awful lot you can’t drag across a carpet like that.
Twenty-two feet down at the foot of the stairs is a door; galvanized steel featuring twin-cylinder mortise locks with drill-resistant casings and a seventeen-bolt backup. The internal bracings are separated by layers of sound-deadening thermal insulation, and the door is finished with attractive natural beech panels.
Beyond this door is what I described to my builder as a games room. Forty-five feet by thirty and of concrete construction, it’s lit by an octet of spotlights, one pair at each corner of the ceiling, and furnished with an integrated antenna loop connected to a cellular repeater for reliable mobile phone reception. The walls are plastered and painted a delicate eggshell-blue. The floor is covered with three-inch-thick rubber matting. The builder, sadly, was confused by my explanation and now resides four feet above the ceiling, under eight feet of earth.
In the center of the room is a twenty-by-twenty security cage, built from ten-gauge steel wire with a two-and-a-half-inch diamond mesh and one-and-a-quarter-inch channel frame. The cage has a five-by-seven door with twin cylinder locks and a reinforced titanium padlock.
Inside the cage is an iron-framed single bed, anchored to the floor with seven-inch bolts. It has a pocket sprung mattress, white cotton sheets and a cozy lambswool blanket. At each corner of the bed, bolted to the floor through the rubber mat, is a steel ring, six inches in diameter. In the far corner of the cage are a toilet and sink with mains plumbing.
And finally, on this day at least, there was one other item in the cage. It was located in the middle of the floor, rolled into a tight ball. It was sensitive to light, to the sound of slamming doors and to the smell of home cooking. Covered in layers of brown wool and dark blue denim, it started as I entered the cage and stared at me silently through wide, hateful eyes. It was tired, disoriented and hungry. And its name was Erica Shaw.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_b8911c10-0f14-5eef-9191-1688cc91f8df)
The self-confident bounce was long gone. Erica didn’t move as I balanced the dinner tray in one hand and removed the padlock with the other. The sound of the key in the door, however, had her bolt upright and scrabbling backward across the rubber floor until her back thumped hard against the far side of the cage. She pulled her knees to her chin and glared up at me, wide eyes blazing with venom and fear, the tight, glowing curls of her hair now a matted, lifeless mess that covered her face and clung to the tears as they streamed across her cheeks. Silently, she trembled.
“Erica,” I said softly. “It’s dinnertime.” I placed the tray carefully on the edge of the bed. A wooden tray, decorated with piglets and ducklings, with a built-in knee cushion filled with tiny beans. A plastic plate, dishwasher friendly, with a daisy-chain print around the rim. A matching tumbler filled with ice-cold Highland Spring. Still, not sparkling. Plastic knife and fork.
She neither moved nor spoke; just stared, knees shuddering, shoulders heaving with each shallow breath.
I joined her on the floor, sat facing her. “Come on, you need to eat something besides cereal. You’re looking thin.” No response. “It’s tasty. Try a bit, see if you like it?” Nothing. “Erica, listen to me. I’m not going to let you starve to death here.”
I could sense a change in her then, though she gave no visible sign. I felt her desire to answer me back, to demand to know exactly what she would be dying of. But she still said nothing.
“Okay.” I sighed. “I’ll leave you alone. Do your best.” I pulled myself back up, turned to leave the cage. “Oh, and the sheets on that bed are brand-new.” I swung the door shut, turned the key on both bolts, reached down by my feet for the padlock. “You don’t have to keep sleeping on the floor.”
And then I took a full serving of orange sauce and green beans square in the face.
“I’m not eating fucking meat, you psycho freak!” Erica screamed, grabbing handfuls of steel mesh as the offending fillet plopped to the floor. The plate rolled the length of the cage and clattered against the toilet. Potatoes bounced in all directions. Sauce ran from my hair. I kicked myself.
“Good shot,” I conceded, “but honestly, you’re not in a position to pick and choose.”
“No, you’re right,” she spat, gripping the mesh, her knuckles white, eyes flashing like those of a cornered tiger. “Which reminds me, how long are you going to keep me in this fucking dungeon?”
A reasonable question, and one to which I wished I knew the answer. The simple fact is that time, tendency and tourism are fickle bedfellows, and one can rarely predict when they might deign to coincide. Probably best not to tell her that, though, so I tried to look halfway confident as I asked, “How long’s a piece of string?”
She pushed herself from the door, backed away with a half skip. “Well,” she said, smiling, “you’re hardly going to keep me here for the next eighty years, and you already said I’m not allowed to starve to death, so either you’re holding me to ransom or you’re just going to kill me. Either way, I guess you’ll want to get it over with fairly soon.”
I returned her mocking grin. “Well,” I said, “I’m certainly not intending to sell you.” Her spark retreated. “And I’m sorry to keep you waiting, but I simply haven’t had the opportunity to do anything with you yet. At some point, I’ll take you out, and we’ll play some games, and if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll get to go home. But if you’re too weak to run, you won’t stand a chance, and if you starve, it won’t be any fun for either of us.”
Silence revisited her forthwith. The defiance, the loathing, even the fear vanished from her eyes, leaving only great dark pools of sorrow.
“So, you’ll get what you’re given, and it’ll be good for you, and you’ll eat it, so perhaps you’d like to salvage what you can while I go and find you a mop.”
Fucking vegetarians.
* * *
I didn’t really know what I needed, but I figured I’d make a run for the supermarket on the near side of town. February’s snow was gone, but the onset of spring had been lazy and as darkness fell, the temperature dropped below freezing, the remains of a misty evening turning the roads to ice.
Had the gritters laid any grit, this would have been an easy five-minute drive. As it was, however, I faced an invigorating struggle against the renegade forces of physics. With friction an early casualty, the van slithered maniacally about the rink, seemingly intent on meeting its fate belly-up in a frozen trench. The rush hour had barely ended, but I didn’t pass a single car; no one else was stupid enough to take on the elements out here. I couldn’t help thinking that were I to come to grief, spring would arrive before help did. I liked it.
After twenty-three minutes of sheer exhilarating uncertainty, I reached the motorway. Coated with a layer of brine, and bustling with weary souls packed into grubby tin cans, it brought me crashing back down to the dreariness of everyday life. I felt like a tuna.
Quietly wondering whether vegetarians ate tuna, I followed the usual shopping routine. In the magazine section, I browsed gawky uniformed schoolgirls with braces on their teeth. A petite brunette in a pinstriped suit leafed through the local paper, the familiar headline barely raising an eyebrow. Missing Girls Almost Certainly Abducted. The greeting card aisle was brimming with fat-bottomed mothers ignoring their bored, fidgeting offspring in favor of tired punchlines and nauseating sentiment. Women’s Clothing: deserted but for the fragile, gray-haired fitting room attendant, fixing the floor with the sorrowful gaze of the undervalued, desperate to believe that there might—nay, must be more to life.
In Fruit & Veg I selected a peach. Small, rosy and perfectly rounded, she set my mouth watering the moment she caught my eye. Her burly, bruised companion, however, swiftly killed my appetite. Or rather, his uniform did.
There were no sweet cupcakes to be found in the bakery aisle, just an abundance of greasy doughnuts. In fact, I was struck by how few of those loading up on golden syrup cakes and Danish pastries looked like they could really be trusted with them. Unlike the redhead in the pet-food aisle with the wide hips and the skinny arms, none of these creatures could claim to be big-boned. Considering all implications, I moved on.
Pasta and Sauces: a towering blonde with a hook nose and bandy legs which, under cursory inspection, seemed too thin to support the weight of her body or offer any stability in the face of prevailing winds. She walked in a disjointed manner, which made it difficult to judge between prosthetic and anorexic; either way, I prefer a little meat with my spaghetti.
Things began to look up in the frozen food section: another redhead, younger and narrower this time and more auburn than ginger, in tight jeans that showed off the delicious curve of her slender thighs and rounded hips. I leaned past her to peer into the chiller, barely brushing her ponytail with my cheek. Tea tree and mint and an underlying hint of vanilla. All at once invigorating and relaxing. “Excuse me,” I said, gently laying an apologetic hand on her arm as I reached around to grab a tub of coconut Carte D’Or. She glanced at me and offered a polite smile, made no attempt to move away. Not wishing to push my luck, however, I returned the smile and backed off. I lingered over the frozen vegetables, waited for her to close the chiller and pass by before following at a half-aisle distance, carefully matching my pace to hers.
She was pushing a trolley-for-one, but this was clearly a weekly shop; meal-wise she had the makings of seven single servings and was now selecting an eight-pot pack of fromage frais. She clearly let her hair down one night a week.
She’d already covered most of the store: baked beans, tuna, sweetcorn, tinned cat food, Fairy Liquid, pasta and rice and couscous and a couple of cook-in sauces. The items seemed largely to follow a pattern. Perhaps these were things vegetarians ate.
Her allure all but overshadowed by the sudden wisdom she’d bestowed upon me, and knowing now what needed to be done, I released the redhead from the clutches of my intent and set off on a vital quest to reclaim the moral high ground and secure my reputation as an impeccable host.
I made it as far as the fish counter.
It’s a rare and fortunate man who can pinpoint precisely the moment his life began to unravel. Most can only guess, grasping at distant memories of wealth and security and happiness and wondering just where the hell it all went while they scrape their attempts at independence off the bottom of the oven. Yesterday it was a detached cottage with creeping ivy, a pretty and talented wife who was never too tired and kids who tidied their rooms and kept their elbows off the table. A retriever. A study. A Volvo. Today, a rented one-bed cesspit with grease stains on the ceiling. A portable TV. A Metro. Fleas. The decline, though outwardly long and tortuous, passes in the blink of an eye.
For these people there is no time stamp; their fall from grace occurred over months and years, but still they search the depths of their souls for a date and time in the vain belief that a single moment revisited might serve to reverse their fortunes. Often, they search for the rest of their lives.
I, on the other hand, am one of the lucky ones. I know exactly when it all started to go wrong for me. It was April 5 at 19:23:17, and it started with a pair of eyes.
Most of the eyes I see stare right through me. Some linger on the pavement, desperate to avoid meeting other eyes. Others gaze into the middle distance, vacant and expressionless, betraying a desire to be somewhere, anywhere other than here and now. Some eyes flicker and glaze over and roll back and just stare at nothing at all. But most eyes stare through me as if I’m simply not here.
These eyes, though, these eyes were different. They met my own, bored through them, stared right into me. They carried a charge of some intangible recognition, a magnetic déjà vu trailing its spidery fingers down my spine, throwing sparks of invitation and longing tinged with fear and denial, rendering me at once both intoxicated and drained. My train of thought derailed; my empty head floated free of my shoulders, legs threatening to buckle under the weight of my directionless body. I don’t know how long this electrifying gaze held my own, nor how these eyes came to be mere inches from mine, but sometime later, they blinked and released me from their spell.
My head snapped back into sharp focus. The rancid stench of cockles and mussels headed straight for the back of my throat, giving me the insufferable task of appearing not to gag. Arched eyebrows and a flickering smile told me I’d failed and, for the first time since childhood, I felt the onset of a blush. Frankly, I didn’t know where to look—but I settled on her chest, where I found comfort and understanding in four neatly printed words.
Her name, apparently, was Caroline. And she was Here To Help.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_dddeb93a-64d9-5a64-9358-84d841bc18ee)
At night, through a motorway spray, it’s impossible to see the faces of those who pass by in the next lane. Scores, hundreds even, of nameless, faceless drones, nothing more than hazards to be avoided, reminders to check your stopping distance. Even when unfettered and unobscured, in the supermarket or in a busy shopping street on a weekday afternoon, they serve only to delay your progress, bumbling around in front of you when they should surely all be at work. In short, strangers seem altogether less than human. They’re just something that gets in the way.
Anyone who’s stood on a crowded corner wondering where so many people are in such a hurry to go has, then, unwittingly uncovered the perplexing irony of human existence. As you stand in idle surveyance, taking a break from the million and one stresses coursing continuously through your mind, it occurs to you that the withered old lady holding up that increasingly irate bus queue has a life not far removed from your own. She has a family who don’t call her often enough, a home she can’t afford to maintain, a pet she feeds before feeding herself. She has a birth certificate and a shoe size. She sees the same sky, the same pavement, the same faceless drones that you see. If you tickle her, she’ll laugh. Sometimes she’s happy; sometimes she’s sad. Mostly, she’s resigned. She has thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears. Eighty-eight years of vivid memories.
Her name is Ivy, and she’s been a widow for almost a decade. Right now she has somewhere to go. You don’t know where that is; only she does. Later, when Ivy gets home, she’s going to feed her cat a tin of store-brand chunks-in-jelly before she unpacks the shopping. The cat, a long-haired tabby named Foggy, will then watch her collapse to the kitchen floor with a breathless gasp, clawing at the center of her chest. In exactly a week, Gemma, Ivy’s granddaughter, makes a rare and unannounced visit to show off her ultrasound photos. There’s no answer at the door; the lights are on, the curtains closed, and the cat screeching to be let out. Through the frosted glass she can make out an untidy pile of letters and bills on the doormat. Naturally concerned, she fetches a spare key from the car and lets herself in. The cat bolts.
For eighty-eight years, the world revolved around Ivy. That which she could see and touch was real to her, everything else a mere figment. Departing visitors, setting off back to their own lives, were swiftly dispatched from her conscious thoughts, taking with them all tangible evidence of their existence. She would lock her doors to the outside world and settle down with a cup of tea, but for Foggy entirely alone in her world. And yet conversely, whilst the conversation in that departing car might revolve around Ivy for a handful of miles, the reality of her existence would soon be forgotten in favor of the more immediate stresses and strains pervading the lives of Peter and Janet. Out of sight, out of mind.
Every human being occupies a space at the dead center of his or her own universe. When Ivy’s universe imploded, when she made the transition from leading lady to cat food, the myriad separate worlds occupied by her family and friends were fleetingly altered. Gemma’s world was naturally rocked the most; the sight that greeted her that morning changed her flippant outlook on life permanently. At Ivy’s funeral, thirty-two universes were briefly united in mourning, both for Ivy and for Gemma’s unborn baby.
Right now universes are being created, thrown together and destroyed the world over. Seven billion souls, each preoccupied with their own unique reality, each with a head full of memories, plans, learned knowledge and accumulated trivia; birthdays, telephone numbers, bus routes, passwords. Each one with somewhere to go, something they need to get done. They all have birth certificates and shoe sizes. Every single one has a story.
I wondered what this girl’s story was—not Caroline, though her face was still beaconing through my brain like the terrain warning on a stricken aircraft, but rather the one sitting alone at the bar, fidgeting with her mobile phone and trying to buy a drink. She was hard to read from this angle, being, as she was, so remarkably unremarkable. Average height. Average face. Average bust. Mousy, nondescript hair of average length. Ten-a-penny jeans and a plain black shirt. Even the barman didn’t notice her.
I sat in the corner with a glass of house red and a week-old Telegraph, ostensibly ogling the revealingly attired blonde at the next table. The center of almost universal male attention in the bar, her smirk cruised from admirer to admirer as she feigned interest in her companions’ conversation. Having no desire to distinguish myself, I allowed her to see me looking.
By eleven-thirty, Annie Average was one of a mere handful of stragglers left clinging to the bar, stubbornly ignoring all requests to drink up and leave. Seemingly tired of continuously checking her inbox, she had taken to scrutinizing the small print on the back of a train ticket she’d pulled from her purse. Neither her expression nor her posture had altered throughout the evening, save for a gentle swaying that started around ten. Finally, she stood and wrapped herself in the ankle-length black woolen coat she’d been warming all night with her average-size bottom. I drained the last few dregs from my wineglass; I’d dispatched a whole bottle of the wretched stuff, though most of it went in among the shrubbery on the windowsill, conveniently located just beside my left knee. As such, I affected a vacant gaze and a John Wayne swagger as I headed for the door.
Stood up and fed up, Annie did exactly as I’d expected and headed for the railway station. She set a moderate pace, allowing me to match my footsteps to her smaller strides without tripping over my own feet. We joined the flow of drunken teenagers migrating to the clubs across the river, a steady bustle despite the bitter cold. Once over the bridge, we would meet head-on the tide of out-of-towners pouring into clubland from the railway station. And since this dimly lit center of jostling confusion headed down the side street in which I’d parked the van, I was anticipating a swift conclusion to an easy hunt. At least until her phone rang.
Her “hello” carried a tone of mock disapproval that belied her grave demeanor, and she met the offered excuses with expressions of humor and sympathy. She clearly wasn’t one for confrontation. I hung back as she slowed to an idle stroll on the bridge, running her free hand along the icy railings and cracking frozen puddles with the toe of her boot. An occasional husky laugh drifted back to me above the passing stream of profane taunts and leering catcalls. Her lovelorn dawdling pleased me somewhat, since I was both optimistic that her improved mood would make my job easier and anxious that she should be finished on the phone when it did so.
In the event it didn’t matter. Lost in flirtation, Annie found the stone stairs leading to the towpath beside the river. One dreamy step at a time, she giggled her way down into the darkness beneath the bridge. I watched her from above as she paced in a circle, distractedly kicking small stones into the water, head tilted over to hold the phone in the crook of her neck, hands thrust snugly in her pockets. At length, I watched her drift ever farther from the bridge. And when she was all but out of sight, I followed.
In the shadows beside the water, the air was heavy and still. The towpath is bordered by a high stone wall, at the top of which is the busy station approach. Most of the traffic noise wafts overhead, making the path a relative sea of calm. The bridges along this stretch of the river are too low for a sail mast but passable by small pleasure cruisers which, at night, occupy every available inch of mooring space. The sounds here are of water lapping against fiberglass, fiberglass rubbing against wood. The only light is that which drifts across from the carvery on the far bank, or down from the streetlights on the road above.
The path was deserted but for Annie and me; the lights of the restaurant faded behind us, the riverbank widened and the horse-chestnuts thickened, and all was impeccably dark and serene. Beyond the far shore, the cathedral spire rose proudly above a blackened tree line, a glowing beacon of humanity against a soulless gray-orange sky.
Annie finally stopped wandering to rest against a life-buoy station; the orange float was long gone, an easy and attractive target for small-minded vandals. I melted into the trees, listening silently to a conversation winding down: can’t-waits and won’t-be-longs, okay-I-promises and hold-that-thoughts. I wondered what Caroline was doing just then. I heard Annie say her goodbyes, waited while she wallowed in the misty-eyed afterglow. I watched her dawning realization of having strayed farther than she’d intended; she spun around and around, taking in the darkness, the silence, her solitude. Her unremarkable eyes flashed disorientation and frustration, and weariness at the prospect of the long walk back.
And then, movement. In the shrubbery not twenty feet away, a dark form, hunched, creeping. Annie sensed it, too; she snapped her head around, peering into the blackness behind her. The dark shape turned statue. I could all but smell the adrenaline coursing through it as it crouched, barely breathing until, after what surely felt like hours, Annie released a long breath of her own and turned back to the path. I remained rigid, upright; I let her pass me, glancing nervously behind her as the figure moved almost silently through the brush. It was among the trees now, virtually on top of me as Annie quickened her pace, and then in a blink it was out on the path and running.
She certainly heard it then. She turned, eyes wide, to face it as it bore down on her, let out a half gasp as it knocked her off her feet. Before I could react, she was in the undergrowth, cursing and spitting, coat ripped open. Her assailant hunched over her, alternately swatting away her flailing limbs and working on her belt.
Incensed, I broke free of my incredulous trance and the cover of the trees and, snatching up a fallen branch from the ground, stepped into the open mere feet from the struggle. A clearing of my throat was enough to gain the predator’s attention. He looked up at me sharply and froze, mouth agape, eyebrows hitched up almost to his hairline. A kid, no more than twenty-one, dressed from head to toe in black synthetic fibers, his blazing orange eyebrows a fair giveaway as to the identifying feature hidden beneath his beanie hat. Annie had stopped struggling and stared up at me, her eyes undecided between panic and relief. The kid, small but solidly built, had straddled her, pinning her wrists to the frozen earth with his spidery hands, her ankles with his own. Eyes fixed on the hefty limb I held before me, he didn’t move a muscle.
“Leave,” I said. “Now.”
The kid, to his credit, didn’t need telling twice; he was off, vanishing into the darkness from whence he came minus his wallet and one of his shoes.
“You okay?”
“Oh, my God.” Annie lay there, coat spread, shirt hitched up, belt unbuckled. “How stupid am I?”
“Not your fault,” I lied, tossing the branch back among the trees. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, reached up to take my outstretched hand. “No, I’m a mess, though.” I helped her to her feet, and she straightened out her clothes, fastened her belt, shook out her hair. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here,” she mused. “Christ, if you hadn’t come along—”
“Yeah, I did, though, so don’t think about it.” I gave her space to gather the few contents of her bag from where they’d exploded across the path. “Do you want me to take you to the police?” I offered. “I’m just parked up at the train station.”
“God, I don’t know whether I can go through all that tonight.” She slung her bag over her shoulder, gave her pockets one last check. “I do need to find a train, though, so if you’re walking that way...” She finally looked up at me, puppy eyes at the ready. She seemed remarkably untraumatized.
“You’re sure you’re okay?”
“I’m sure,” she said. “I just want to get home.”
I conceded. She turned off her phone and dropped it into her bag, and I spitefully kicked the kid’s shoe into the river as we set off briskly back toward the lights and the noise. “So,” I asked her, “what’s your name?”
“Annie,” she said.
What were the odds on that?
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_5fd16f3f-42fc-560f-a6e1-d877961f01f6)
Annie made a hell of a mess.
I’d convinced her that the last train had probably gone and that even if it hadn’t, I was going her way and could get her home sooner and in greater comfort. On the basis that I’d saved her from an unpleasant mauling and was therefore to be trusted, she happily accepted a ride.
To be quite honest, when she invited me in for tea, I fully intended to just drink it and leave. In spite of my earlier intentions, I found Annie’s company pleasant and her conversation lively and interesting—sufficiently so to distract me from looking out for deserted lanes and vacant lots along the route. I also felt an unexpected pang of protectiveness, and by the time we reached the coast, my only urge was to see her home safely.
However, one cup of tea became several, and Annie matched every one I drank with a tumbler of vodka. As we talked, it quickly became apparent that this was no one-off, that the dismissive actions of the man in her life drove her most nights into the arms of a bottle.
His name was Jeremy and by two in the morning, when I finally removed the last of the stains from the carpet, I’d grown to dislike him intensely. He seemed to me grossly egotistical and of low moral standing.
“He wouldn’t tell me where he lived,” Annie recounted as she filled her glass for the third time, halfway with vodka and topped with a splash of cranberry juice. “Said he had nosy neighbors and they were friendly with his ex-wife, and that she’d make life difficult for him if she knew he was seeing anyone. I know, I didn’t buy it, either. So I followed him one night.” She took a long gulp of her drink, one that took her three attempts to swallow. “I did that thing, you know, ‘follow that taxi!,’ and I followed him right to his front door. I was expecting to see... Well, I don’t know what I was expecting to see, but it was just this crappy little two-up-two-down, nothing like as posh as he said it was.”
Contrary to the impression her flowery telephone manner had given me, she wasn’t painting an endearing picture of Jeremy. She told me that he’d lied about his home, his job, his background. Christ, she wasn’t even sure Jeremy was his real name. “He stands me up all the bloody time,” she continued. “Usually when I complain, he tells me he was stuck in the office finishing a report or his Jag wouldn’t start, which is bullshit because he hasn’t even got a car—he gets buses everywhere because they’re free because he’s a bloody bus driver, not a regional transport coordinator, which is what he said he was. And the stupid thing is, I’ve never let on that I know that because I don’t want to look like a psycho. Why, I don’t know. It’s only been six weeks, and half the time I actually resent the fact that I even bother.” Gulp. “But hey, it keeps me on my toes, right? And to be honest, when he’s not being a lying toerag, he’s quite a nice guy. And I’m grateful for the distraction—I mean come on, my life is just so...so...”
“Average?” I suggested.
