by Sarah Dunant
“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Dante’s Inferno, more like, but, then, she had never been a pub person. If I’d been better at this kind of thing would the world have been an easier place? she wondered.
A couple of years after she’d finished the university and come down to London, she had joined a band that had a regu-lar monthly gig in a pub in Notting Hill. She’d been playing with them for about eighteen months when she met Tom. He came to see her perform there after they’d started dating. Couldn’t keep his eyes off her. It was the most singular erotic experience, singing to one particular person in a crowd and knowing that as soon as you got off the stage they couldn’t wait to get their tongue down your throat and your clothes off your body. She began to understand what the boys must feel, the power that kind of attraction brings with it. Once she had felt it she knew she could exploit it for herself, that this was the missing ingredient from what everyone agreed was a great voice. She could have done something with that knowledge, taken her performing to another level. But it didn’t work out like that. As their affair got more intense she pulled out of so many rehearsals that eventually the band gave her the push. Tom was angry rather than sympathetic, insisting that she was too good for them. But he didn’t go out of his way to encourage her to join anyone else. By then their record collections had already started to mingle—his classical cuckoo in her rock ’n’ roll nest—and her life was so full of him that she could almost convince herself she didn’t miss it, either the music or the band.
Wimp—that’s what Sally had called her. You’re letting him walk all over you, don’t you see? He doesn’t so much want you to himself as he doesn’t want you to be anybody else’s.
She stood staring at the mass of people in front of her. So easy to see it when it’s over. So hard to be wise at the time. Would she do better now? She saw herself, sitting on her bed, slipping her T-shirt up over her breasts and guiding a stranger’s hands toward her nipples. Maybe Tom’s selfishness had taught her something after all. Sharpened her instinct for survival. And revenge.
She looked around. If this wasn’t her element, then neither, surely, was it his. Where would he go to hide that warped little soul of his? The bar maybe, huddling himself over a single pint while the crowd jostled around him, feeding his malevolence from an exaggerated sense of isolation. But when she finally forced herself to the front, he wasn’t there. She wondered if she ought to buy a drink, just in case she looked out of place, but the possibility of catching the barmaid’s eye seemed remote, and anyway, no one was taking much notice.
The background music subsided for a second, then flooded back in even louder, a Phil Spector wall of sound. A shout of recognition went up from a group nearby and a few happily out-of-tune voices yelled, “I saw Mummy kissing Santa Claus” at football volume. Men in suits trying to relive their youth. She turned and started to push her way away from them.
And as she did so she saw him. He was sitting at a crowded table near one of the windows, jammed in among another guy and two girls, talking. He was a fast worker. The girl he was focused on was young, probably in her late teens, heavy with puppy fat and too much makeup. She was wearing one of those dresses that chain stores sell around Christmas, all Lycra and glitter, designed for women with no stomach or thighs. She had both. She looked, well, Christmas-wrapped. But whose name was on the label?
She drew back into the crowd, but there was no chance that he would spot her. He was too busy. She watched, fascinated. In animation he didn’t seem nearly so creepy. Looked as if he might almost be the same as anybody else. But the longer she studied him the more telltale signs leaked through. For one thing he stared too much. He kept looking at the girl, nodding his head at everything she said, the same nervous smile flickering over his lips. Not that she seemed to be noticing. Her cheeks were flushed and she was giggling a lot. In front of her there was half a glass of what looked like rum and Coke and two already empty ones. What would she say if someone told her now to be careful? Mind your own fucking business, probably. Fair enough. Hell, everybody works hard enough for the rest of the year to be able to let go once or twice. Is that how it happened? You blunted your antennae so all the normal warning signals went down on you and at the one crucial moment you said yes when you should have said no. It was easily done. There but for the grace of God go all of us at some time or another.
She shivered. But it wasn’t that simple. If the girl did say yes now there would be a dozen witnesses to the man she left the pub with. They might all have double vision, but somewhere in their blurred memories there would be enough of an Identikit face for the police to go on. Was he getting careless?
To her right the girl’s friend said something, and she turned toward her with a laugh. Instantly his face changed. The body lost all its energy. He sat still, eyes on the table. She felt him roll back into himself, pull up the drawbridge. This time when he glanced sideways at the girl there was something else in his eyes.
She couldn’t bear to look at him anymore. Whatever she did she couldn’t challenge him here, not amid all these people. She turned and pushed her way toward the door. As she went, the first last-call bell reverberated around the bar. Nobody took any notice of it.
Outside, the snow had almost stopped, but the wind was vicious. She turned the car heating on full blast and sat with her eyes on the clock: 10:56, 10:57, 10:58. The minutes passed agonizingly slowly.
By 11:10 people were beginning to swarm out onto the streets. She had the door in full view, but the crush of bodies was such that she couldn’t be sure she could see everyone. She felt her heart beating faster. Then, about 11:15, she spotted the girl. She had on a big gray coat, still open in the front so you could see the sparkle of her dress. For a second she thought it might be his coat, but as the girl hit the outside air she flinched and yanked it shut with a long tie belt, pulling up an obviously girlish collar against the wind. Immediately after her came her friend, equally full of Christmas spirits, and together they staggered off down the street, grabbing hold of each other and giggling helplessly as the icy pavements made them skid. Two young women on their way home to another Christmas with Mum and Dad and the rest of their lives. How many times does fate come that close—picking out the person two or three down the line and never letting you know how nearly it could have been you?
She turned her attention back to the door. The stream continued, but with no sign of her prey. Maybe he was still inside. He and a lot of others. In this weather you could hardly blame them for wanting to carry on drinking, and so close to Christmas the police would no doubt turn a blind eye to an odd ten or fifteen minutes of illegality with regular customers. So was he a regular? A usual friendly face on a Friday or Saturday night?
Why not? It wouldn’t be the first time that the monster turned out to be just one of the lads. Wasn’t that what they said when Peter Sutcliffe and the Yorkshire Ripper were revealed to be the same person? Our Peter. A regular sort of chap. Bit quiet maybe, but likable enough. Good for a few drinks with the boys, a man who liked to play with kids. Polite. Except for the night of his own full moon when he drove out with a claw hammer and spent his seed up the back passages of prostitutes. Other than that just a regular sort of chap.
The thoughts took her mind off the job and she nearly missed him. He came out quickly, head down, intent on where he was going. But where? Not home, that was for sure. He turned the opposite way and strode off into the snow. She waited thirty seconds, then, with him still in view, started the car. Two hundred yards farther down the street he hit Hornsey High Road. He turned left and walked up to a northbound bus stop. Already there was a line of people waiting, stamping their feet and blowing into their gloves, or—in the case of a rather drunken couple—clasped in each other’s arms. He didn’t join the line but slipped instead into the doorway of a nearby shop where he was neatly swallowed up by the shadows. It made sense. If he was heading farther afield he wouldn’t want to be remembered by his fellow passengers, wou
ld he?
She drove past and parked fifty yards farther along. She was becoming an expert at mirror watching. Except this time she didn’t dare risk keeping the engine running. This time they would be cold together. The clock read 11:35.
At 11:50 the bus finally came, greeted by a little roar of cele-bration from the line that by this time had swelled to about fifteen. They all tried to crowd on at the same time, desperate to get out of the wind, the couple still glued together. It took a while to collect their tickets and settle them all down. From down the street another man was running toward the bus stop, waving frantically to make sure the driver had seen him.
The bus waited, let him on, then pulled away. But still without one passenger. In the doorway he hadn’t moved.
twenty
Time passed. The snow started again, a moving lace curtain filtering through the yellow light of the streetlamps, falling silently onto the coated sidewalks below. He must be so cold standing there. But still he stayed, stuck in the camouflage of darkness like an insect on a leaf.
A man and a woman came up to the stop and stood peering anxiously at the writing on its side. Miraculously, a taxi’s yellow VACANT sign glowed out from halfway down the road. They hailed it wildly and it stopped. You could almost see the relief in their body language as they piled in. The clock read 12:10. It was firmly into night-bus territory now.
By 12:20 the car was so cold she had to stuff her hands up into her armpits to keep them from freezing. When she looked up again she saw the figure of a young woman coming up to the bus stop. She was not exactly dressed for the weather: a butt-length half-coat over jeans and heeled boots, with no hat and a less-than-serious scarf. She ran a gloved finger down the bus information panel, trying to sort out the words through the snow. In the doorway behind her he moved slightly. She must have registered him out of the corner of her eye because she turned abruptly, then said something, as if in reply. No doubt she was wondering whether he knew if the last bus had gone.
“ ’Fraid not,” he would say. “I’ve only just got here myself.”
“What about the night buses?”
“No idea. Half an hour, an hour maybe.”
She shrugged, rubbing her hands energetically to keep warm. “How about this weather, eh? Maybe it’s going to be a white Christmas.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
She hesitated, a definite hint of nerves in her body language, then turned back to the bus stop.
What had he really said to her? Maybe he’d invited her to join him in the darkness. She was evidently more sensible than her clothes.
A little while later a couple of taxis went by. They were both occupied, but in the snow the girl wouldn’t be able to see that. She hailed the first one, dropping her hands despairingly as she spotted a passenger in the back, then watching forlornly as the second drove by.
By now the sidewalks were deserted and the snow was getting thicker by the minute. You could see she was worried. If she waited there much longer she might turn into an ice maiden. Another five or ten minutes passed. Not only were there no people anymore, there were hardly any cars. The world was closing down, leaving her and him alone in a winter wonderland. Suddenly she made a decision and, with one last look into the night, turned on her heel and headed off down the road, walking as fast as the weather would allow.
In the car Elizabeth felt her whole body tense up. She kept her eyes glued to the shop doorway. Ten seconds, fifteen, twenty. The snow had almost swallowed the girl up when he made his move, eyes down, chin in his collar, following silently, placing each foot carefully in the footsteps she had left in the virgin snow.
As she watched him her heart went ballistic. She felt that same wedge of terror forcing its way up into her throat like vomit, and for that second she was back in her bedroom in the middle of the night, wide-awake, nerve endings screaming as she registered the sound of someone else’s breathing next to her.
She turned on the ignition and the engine spluttered into life. In the intense silence of the snow the sound was enormous. This time he heard it. This time he turned and looked. Would he recognize the car? He must have passed it enough times outside her house. Well, it was too late for such niceties now.
She pulled out and drove past him. The girl was fifty yards ahead. In the mirror she saw him watching. As she drew parallel with her he stopped and slipped into another doorway.
If the girl heard the car she didn’t do anything to show it. Elizabeth rolled down the driver’s window to attract her attention. A flurry of snow rushed in.
“Excuse me?”
Registering it was a woman’s voice, the girl now stopped and turned but didn’t come any closer.
In the car she took a deep breath. “I . . . I couldn’t help noticing. I mean, I just came out from a party back there and saw you standing at the bus stop. You’ve obviously missed the last bus.”
“Yeah,” she said with about as much friendliness as a Rott-weiler.
“Well, I’m on my way north, too. I mean, that’s where I live and I wondered if I could give you a lift home. You won’t get a taxi now in this weather and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
The girl stared at her. She was not unattractive—dark hair framing a heart-shaped face with a cute little nose going raw with the cold. She put her head to one side, almost as if she were trying to smell out any possible trouble. A splash of snowflake hit one eye and she blinked it away. “Er, thanks, but I’m fine. I only live a few blocks away.”
Now it was clear they were both lying. Obviously the girl had detected something. In the car she tried frantically to think of something to say that might reassure her, but her mind went blank. The young woman had turned away and was already moving off down the street again.
Shit. She tried to put herself in her place. A deserted street late at night and a woman offering you a lift. There would have been a time when you wouldn’t have questioned it. But that was before the sexual appetite of Rosemary West had been splattered all over the front pages, reminding one in turn of Myra Hindley and how much the world had changed. Now women in cars could mean men in the backseats. Now the world was so fucked up that girls could die from being too careful.
In the mirror she thought she detected a move from his doorway. Oh, no, you don’t. She pulled out again and caught up with the girl twenty yards on.
“No, please, listen, don’t go.” Her voice was louder now. In his doorway he would be able to hear every word carried through snow silence. So be it. “I mean, I don’t want to scare you, but you must have heard that there have been attacks on young women in this area recently. Apparently there’s some nut going ’round with a hammer, pulling girls off the streets, raping and battering them. It was in the local paper this week. The police have put out a warning about young women walking home alone.”
“Oh, Christ.” The girl hesitated. Clearly her life was too full to bother with the local paper. But somebody must have said something about it, you could tell from the flicker that crossed her face.
She rammed the point home. “I know you’re probably nervous of accepting a lift, but I honestly think you should take it. I mean, I couldn’t help noticing that guy by the bus stop. He . . . well, I thought I saw him start to follow you down the road.”
This time the panic showed on her face as she darted her eyes back to the street behind her.
“Oh, Christ,” the girl said again, but this time she came closer to the driver’s window to check her out more closely. What did she see? A woman who had got straight out of bed and into the car without so much as a glance in the mirror. She probably looked worse than he did. She could feel her wavering. I should have brushed my hair, she thought. What had those young girls who accepted a lift in the Wests’ car been thinking at this moment? Nice couple, no doubt. Her mumsy face and figure making up for any hint of wildness in his eyes. She kept her gaze steadily on the young woman’s face. Believe your instincts, she wanted to say to her, that’s what I di
d and I’m still alive now.
The girl glanced into the back of the car, trying to check behind the seat as well as on it. Smart cookie. Then, at last, she said, “I live just beyond Manor House, about two or three miles from here. Is that on your way?”
“Sure, no problem.” She grinned with wild relief. “Get in.”
As the girl walked around to the passenger seat Elizabeth glanced in the mirror and thought she saw a hand flick out from the doorway. How does it feel? she thought triumphantly. Having the prize snatched from right underneath your erection? May the snow freeze your prick off before you get it home, you bastard. She pulled away from the curb while the girl was still doing up her seat belt.
In normal weather the journey would have taken fifteen minutes, maybe less. Now it took twice as long. The roads were like skating rinks. Just before Finsbury Park they came across an accident; a van had wrapped itself around a streetlight and there were two police cars on either side with half the street cordoned off.
“Looks like he missed the turning altogether,” she said quietly.
“Yeah,” replied the girl. “I hope he’s all right.”
They crawled along Seven Sisters Road, a Local Authority salt spreader rumbling toward them out of the darkness like some mutant UFO, yellow lights flashing in swirling snow mists.
“Amazing weather,” the girl said under her breath.
“Yes,” she muttered, “I can’t remember the last time London looked like this.”
“They say it’s going to be a white Christmas.”
“You think it’ll last that long?”
“Don’t see why not. There’s only two days to go.”
Two days. No. It must be more than that. How long had it been since that moment in the supermarket? Two days? No, more, surely. She realized that she could no longer remember; that caught between work, sleep, and fear she had lost her bearings. The girl was saying something. . . .