I am so mesmerised it is a while before I can tear my gaze away. By the time I do, Mark is coming out of another door – to the bedroom, I assume – minus his coat and briefcase, and he walks towards the kitchen cabinets that occupy the far side of the modest living room.
For a moment or two I watch him open and shut the cupboard doors. He appears to be hunting for something, although most of the shelves are empty or populated by an occasional mug or glass, or a solitary, random grocery item.
‘Does this flat belong to you?’ I ask at last. They are the first words either of us has spoken since we arrived and my voice sounds unusually loud.
For an answer – which isn’t an answer at all – Mark deposits a half-empty jar of Nescafé and a liqueur bottle on top of the counter, pushing each of them slightly towards me as if he is making a chess move. Then he says, ‘Take your pick. This is the best I can offer.’
When I gesture at the bottle he sloshes a generous slug of an amber liquid into two thick tumblers and passes one to me.
I perch on the edge of the sofa, which is black, shiny imitation leather. I’m still wearing my coat – rather, Angus’s coat – and I’m reluctant to take it off. The bones of the flat radiate cold as if the heating has not been turned on for some time. The unwelcome chill is exacerbated by the severity of the bare white walls, the lack of curtains and the laminate wood floor. The only sign of human habitation is a pair of brown suede loafers by the door, which look expensive and too big to belong to Mark. I find I am shivering and I don’t think it’s just because of the temperature.
Mark sits down and positions himself so close to me that our legs are pressed together; even through the barriers of wool and denim I am electrifyingly aware of the bulk of his thigh. ‘Saluti!’ he says, clinking his glass with mine. The sweet, tawny concoction tastes of almonds and plump golden apricots. He reaches for a tendril of my hair that has escaped from its pins and is lying on my cheek. ‘Tell me, what’s the problem, Claire?’
I recount the story of the key on the carpet; the curling, ineffective Sellotape; the care with which I had enfolded the Glock within the cream blanket and its unexplained escape. All the while I’m talking, Mark plays with my hair, spiralling it around his forefinger and letting it go before immediately starting the process again. I catch his hand in exasperation. ‘You’re not listening!’
‘I’m distracted. You’re looking good tonight.’ He cocks his head to one side, as if conducting an appraisal of a younger colleague who is beginning to make good after a disappointing start. ‘Now we’ve injected a bit of excitement into your life, I’m coming to the view that deviating from the rules might suit you rather well.’
The casual superiority that infuses this announcement makes me flinch, but I guess he can’t be expected to know I’ve managed to generate my own excitement perfectly well in the past.
He tips forward to kiss me.
I move my head just enough to avoid the contact. ‘Wait, Mark. This is important.’
‘It can’t be that important.’
His mouth is poised above mine and instinctively I run my tongue over my bottom lip. He isn’t Daniel, but my body is on autopilot, reacting as though he is, as if every time I have sex with Mark we rewrite history and Daniel becomes the person who chose me over her, who didn’t crush my heart underfoot by pretending to want me but actually loving somebody else instead. I put my free hand onto Mark’s shoulder, managing – more or less – to keep him at bay.
He sighs at my intransigence. ‘Look, I told you on the phone. You’re being paranoid. The key must have fallen because you didn’t use enough tape to hold it up. Nobody can have taken it because nobody else knows it’s there. Unless you’ve told them?’ At this last possibility his voice hardens briefly.
I frown at him. ‘Of course not.’
‘So, there’s nothing to worry about.’ He holds up his glass, his focus switching very deliberately, very theatrically, between its alcoholic content and my head. ‘Do you realise that in this light the Amaretto is exactly the same colour as your hair?’
‘Mark—’
‘Claire, we’re wasting time. There are so many better things we could be doing—’
‘Why did you tell me the gun was a fake?’
At this, his hand falls from my face and he straightens. Before he speaks there is a hesitation so small I might not have noticed the gap if I hadn’t been listening for it. ‘I didn’t want to frighten you. To shock you.’
‘I might have hurt myself – shot myself. And if those men had come to the house I would have shot them. I could easily have killed one of them.’ I say this carefully, matter-of-factly, without melodrama.
Mark doesn’t reply. It is enough to confirm what I suspected, that he has thought of this possibility already. That he probably gave me the Glock with that very intention. As outcomes go, what could be more convenient than having your creditor taken out in a random shooting by an unhinged female? I let the silence settle, moulding itself around the prospect of the white-haired man lying dead on the doorstep, to make him aware that I know just how much he was hoping this would happen.
‘Why did you want to see me?’ I ask eventually.
‘Hey, you were the one who wanted to meet!’ His eyes are a little too wide; the crease between his eyebrows is a little too deep. I can tell the surprise is feigned.
‘I said that I needed to talk to you. We could have spoken about the gun on the phone some other time. Instead, you told me to come here.’
I hold his gaze with mine. There is an invisible thread between us, our eyes conducting a miniature tug of war. For the first time since we met the torque, the tension, feels quite evenly matched.
‘I suppose I must have been keen to see you. I can’t imagine why…’ He puts his glass on the floor and then his right hand slides between the pleats of Angus’s coat. Underneath I am wearing a red silk blouse. Mark’s hand settles on my breast, just above the cup of my bra, and begins to stroke the flesh through the flimsy muslin of the shirt.
‘What else, Mark? There’s another reason too, isn’t there?’ Although I am able to keep my voice level, my skin is tingling with static, not merely the place where his fingers are in contact, but across the entire surface of my body.
It is evident my questions surprise him. I watch him digest the revelation that I have guessed more than he expected; I see him weigh up the pros and cons of coming clean now, at an earlier, more sober stage in the evening than I imagine he planned. A second or two passes before he says, ‘As a matter of fact something has come up. I could do with your help.’ He pauses, although his hand keeps up its steady rhythmic caress.
We are still staring at each other, eyes locked. It’s a struggle not to reveal the effect he is creating, how close I am to dropping backwards on the sofa, putting an arm around his neck, pulling him on top of me.
‘I need some information about the immigration appeals during the last six months, a list of the unsuccessful ones and the names and addresses of the people who brought them,’ he says eventually. ‘Is that possible?’
I blink, not because it isn’t possible. The success or failure of each appeal to the tribunal is a matter of record. Not only is it possible, Agatha’s careful compilation of the monthly statistics means it is not even difficult, most of the data is already sitting in tabular form on her computer and the rest can be lifted from the witness statements. However, whatever request I might have anticipated Mark would make of me, it certainly wasn’t anything to do with the immigration process.
‘Why do you want to know that?’
‘It’s for my work, Claire. That’s all the information you need.’
‘I don’t have any idea what you do, other than develop houses.’
‘Recruitment. I run a recruitment company for website designers. Place them with different companies.’
I feel my eyebrows arch at the unlikelihood of that scenario. ‘Then why the hell are you interested in unsuccessful immigr
ation appeals?’
‘There might be some website designers amongst them, people who need a job to make another visa application. Possible new business for me.’
This explanation is so ridiculously thin I half expect him to look away in embarrassment, but he doesn’t, although his fingers fall still.
At last I say, ‘That’s not the real reason you want the information, is it?’
‘I think it’s a good enough reason to be going on with.’
‘Supposing I don’t want to help you anymore?’
He smiles, removing his hand from my breast and placing it very deliberately on my leg.
The new interaction pulses through me, hard and warm.
‘I think you will.’
I let his mouth find my mouth and his fingers release the buttons on my blouse, while my own hands unfasten his shirt. Freed from the barriers of wool and silk and cotton he presses his naked chest against mine. Yet even as I sense my body dissolving, something feels wrong in a way it should have done but never did before, and I am struck by the conviction that this will be – must be – the very last time.
All at once there are footsteps in the corridor, voices that get louder before stopping immediately outside the apartment. To listen, I wrestle my face away from Mark and as I do so he hears what I am hearing. Suddenly he stands up, doing up his flies with one hand and his shirt with the other.
‘Shit. Fuck. They’re early! Get in the bedroom!’
Confused, I roll off the sofa. ‘Who is it?’
The metallic rustling of keys sounds on the other side of the door. Mark gives me a small push towards the room where he left his coat and briefcase and I am inside it with the door closed behind me before I have had time to formulate a single coherent thought.
I sit on the bed and slowly do up my blouse. Beside me the curtain-less window is filled with the same extraordinary vista of London, the night illumination of the city tempering the dark to a soft, plum-coloured hue. Gradually, my breathing steadies. It’s even colder in here than in the sitting room and I’ve left Angus’s coat languishing somewhere in the vicinity of the sofa – I can’t remember the exact moment when we parted company. I rub my arms. Since I daren’t turn on a light to find Mark’s jacket, I consider the possibilities of the bedspread. It appears to be thin, cheap cotton, but it is better than nothing.
As I yank the cover free of the mattress something substantial slides onto the floor at my feet. Bending down, I realise the object is Mark’s briefcase. From the other room, I can just about make out the low lilt of conversation. Tracking the pitch and flow of dialogue as best I can, I am fairly certain there are two male voices, one of which must belong to Mark, interspersed with the occasional higher tone of a female. From the volume – or lack of it – I guess they must still be standing in the entrance to the corridor.
The briefcase rests tantalisingly on my lap. Now I’m holding it, I can see it’s more of a manuscript wallet: leather, slim, the type designed to carry only a few crucial documents. The table next to the bed hosts an old-fashioned anglepoise lamp. After a tiny hesitation, I pull down the arm to its full extension and position the bulb so that a small cone of light shines directly onto the pillow, and then I slide open the wallet’s brass catch.
Inside there are three pieces of paper, the lined A4 kind that comes in bulky, tear-off pads I haven’t seen since my note-taking university days. Holding the pages under the tight glow of the lamp reveals each sheet contains a separate handwritten list, all inscribed in the same bright navy ink that Mark used when he gave me his telephone number in the desolate scrap of river wasteland.
The first list appears to be a catalogue of companies, stacked neatly underneath each other and in no obvious order. I run my eye over the names. It is possible, of course, that they are simply Mark’s clients, businesses that require website designers, but nobody in their right mind would put money on that particular scenario. As I stare at the writing, one of the companies seems familiar to me. I am sure I have come across it somewhere before but the context and the details elude me.
The second page contains names and addresses, about ten in total. As far as I can tell the names are female and they are all what the Daily Mail would describe as ‘foreign sounding’ – no Sarahs, Janes, Helens or Jessicas. Instead, among others, we have a Prisha and a Dhriti, an Abebi and a Madu. Although I can’t identify with precision what is so disturbing about the list, as I read a sense of trepidation creeps like floodwater over my ankles, and crawls its way with icy fingers up my calves, my knees, my thighs…
The timbre of the voices in the other room lifts slightly, the way it does when a discussion is drawing to a close. In haste, I look at the last page. The layout is the same as the second page, except that unlike either of the other two sheets this one has a heading: Tier 2 Visas. A Tier 2 visa is the main route into the UK for skilled immigrants; to get a visa of that quality you not only need a job offer but also a certificate of sponsorship from a UK employer with a sponsorship licence.
For all I know the women included on this list might have Tier 2 visas and they might be about to take up well-paid jobs in website design or other skilled work, except that I know this is not the case for at least one member of the group. It was the spelling that jumped out at me. The unexpected k in place of the c. Viktoria is the fourth name down. Our cleaner. I recognise her surname from the references she gave me, and I am quite certain that if she was a skilled immigrant with qualifications in website design, or anything else for that matter, she wouldn’t be earning a pittance cleaning up the crap in our house.
The conversational background music stops, but there is no thud of a shutting door, no signal of departure. Instead, footsteps approach. I stuff the pages back into the briefcase and switch off the anglepoise just as Mark appears in the entrance. He comes over to the bed and takes the wallet from me wordlessly. The semi-dark cloaks the doubt in his eyes and the questions on his face, although I know the suspicion must be there. He disappears, shutting me back in the gloom, only to return a matter of moments later.
‘You can come out now,’ he says, and I emerge into the temporary dazzle of artificial light.
While I stand, uncertain what to do next, Mark picks up his tumbler from the carpet and heads towards the kitchen counter. I spot the briefcase lying on a coffee table, now empty, I imagine. The beauty of old-fashioned handwriting is that it can be destroyed without a trace, it leaves no digital imprint, no telltale file on a hard drive; the letters are footsteps in the sand waiting to be expunged by the incoming tide.
Mark pours himself another measure of Amaretto and holds the bottle out to me.
I shake my head. ‘I think I should be going.’
‘Already?’
‘I ought to get home to Angus,’ I lie, knowing full well that Angus has probably just cleared customs at JFK. Mark flashes me a look of surprise, probably at my belated demonstration of nuptial fidelity.
I lift Angus’s coat from the back of the sofa and shrug my arms into the lining while Mark watches.
‘You won’t forget the information I asked for, will you?’ His tone is stern, poised to sharpen further should it be necessary. ‘Call me as soon as you have it.’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘It will probably take me a couple of days.’
Mark nods. He seems relieved and a little surprised at my easy cooperation. However, I have no intention of forgetting about the list of the names and addresses. For the moment I can’t think of any better way to determine the exact nature of Mark’s grubby little game than to keep on playing it. What’s the old adage? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. And if you can’t tell the difference, then it seems to me that the only option is to learn how to manoeuvre in a very small space.
Besides, what hasn’t yet been mentioned is the Glock. I checked the minimum sentence for unlawful possession of a firearm before I left home and it is five years. If anyone were to ask I would say that Mark would not stoop that low, t
hat he would never blackmail me, but to get what they want people go further than they would ever have believed. They surprise themselves. I suspect there is actually no easy alternative to doing what Mark wants me to do – for now at least.
I say goodbye from the entrance – a quick, sterile wave of my hand – and step into the hallway. Just as the door is closing I peer around the edge of it.
‘By the way’ – I watch Mark jump in surprise – ‘just so you know, I’ve thrown the gun away.’
‘What?’
‘Earlier this afternoon, on my way to meet you, I chucked it into the Thames. I couldn’t take the risk of having a real firearm in the house. That would be against the law.’ As I speak, I visualise the barrel sinking into the folds of the peat-coloured water, the river sealing over the deadly plastic without a trace.
Mark’s expression clouds with anger and shock. I shut the door before he can reply. Then I am back in the lift, down to the foyer, and stepping out into the electric hustle of Tottenham Court Road.
It is clear now that my premonition on the sofa was wrong. It turns out I had already had sex with Mark for the last time before I got anywhere near him today, even if I failed to register the significance of the encounter when it happened. That’s not unusual, I suppose. Some ‘last-ever’ events we know about, we prepare for, we may even celebrate: our final day at school, for instance, or the farewell concert of a rock legend. Mainly, however, we drift along with no conception that the thing we assume is going to be there for as long as we want it has actually just occurred for the very last time. By way of example – and this is a good one – the last ever time that a person says they love you.
The Couple: An unputdownable psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist Page 18