The Heights

by Louise Candlish

  I pull open the door. Inside, the stench of urine is even more overpowering than before and makes me gag. On the floor, there’s a brown bag like the kind takeout comes in. I open it to look, but I don’t touch the contents, not directly. I shove the package in my bag, not my usual one, but one selected for its combination of zip, studded flap and buckle that no pickpocket could hope to crack in less than half a minute. Only when I’ve secured it do I exit the kiosk. I can taste the odour on my lips, smell it on my scarf at my throat.

  As I walk home, my bag feels oddly living, as if I’ve taken possession of an exotic pet and startled it into stillness. Maybe one of those venom-secreting lizards.

  Silent and deadly and indiscriminate.

  Chapter 34

  On the day of the party, my nerves are complicated at the eleventh hour by interference from Justin.

  ‘I know you’ve had this client thing in the diary for a while, but are you sure you want to go? Freya will be expecting us to be together. We always are on the nineteenth.’

  This is true. We mourn together on the anniversary of Lucas’s death and I’m the one who insists on it. ‘I was thinking, maybe we should approach it differently from now on. Now that she’s at college, I don’t want her to feel like she has to sit around moping when she’s back, not for my sake. It might put her off coming home. We need to find joy in Lucas’s life, not dwell on his death.’

  ‘I think that’s a great idea,’ Justin says, but it is quite a leap from my customary seasonal doldrums and I can tell he is doubtful. ‘What’s Vic doing tonight?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’ve heard from him, though?’

  ‘We exchanged texts this morning. He sent me a photo.’ I show him the picture: Lucas aged seven or eight, school sports day. Pale legs, pink cheeks, a trace of Lord of the Flies in his eyes. ‘I need to get ready, Jus. Don’t worry about Freya, she’s with you tonight and we both know that’s the best thing.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ he says, perplexed. ‘Why are you speaking like this. El?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like you’re about to go and, I don’t know, throw yourself off the top of the Shard.’

  ‘I’m not.’ I smile. ‘You have my word I will never knowingly go to the top of the Shard. Don’t overthink it, Jus. Let me do what I have to do, which is show my face for half an hour and paint a little picture of how much prettier next year’s party will be with the lighting fixed. Then I’ll be back and we can have a drink together before we go to bed.’

  I kiss him then. Soon after, I seek out Freya and hug her. There are too few hugs and kisses in this book, I know. It’s an unfortunate consequence of choosing to tell a story about hate.

  * * *

  I dress with care. I want to be blandly glamorous, to blend in, but not so restrictively that I can’t make a run for it if I need to. Instead of a party dress, I choose a jumpsuit in a glittery black fabric with a bit of give in it. Boots with a chunky heel and a proper tread. A jacket I can keep on and not risk abandoning in a heap in the spare bedroom. In the same buckled bag that I took to the estate, sitting alongside my purse, house keys, Oyster card and two phones, is the gun.

  Weirdly, now that I’ve held it, it feels less real, not more. Though I’m confident I’ll need it at most to threaten, definitely not to shoot, I’m of course aware that I’m already a criminal. I’ve checked online and the mandatory minimum sentence for possession of an illegal firearm is five years.

  Justin and Freya are watching TV when I leave, a sushi takeaway on order. Justin has a can of Common or Garden on the go, Freya a Coke. Grateful for the earlier affection, I forbid myself any thoughts of when I will see them again and cheerfully call goodbye.

  ‘Love you, Mum,’ Freya calls, half-distracted by the TV, and it’s impossible not to think of this same night five years ago when Lucas walked out of the door for the last time. I handed him money, I said the right things, but I didn’t hold him. I should have done, I would have done, but he was gone before I could.

  Closing the front door behind me, I startle at the sight of Vic’s van at the kerb, the zany Pop Art livery incongruous in our street of black Volvos and 4x4s. My first thought is, God, has Justin contacted him? Told him I’m acting strangely? No, it’s more likely he’s here because I didn’t reply to his text with the sports day picture, my mind elsewhere.

  His window is wound down and he watches me as I approach. His breath hangs visibly in the cold air. ‘Ellen.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I just wanted to see how you are. I thought we might go for a quick drink.’

  ‘I can’t, sorry. I’m off out. But I’m fine. You?’

  ‘Not bad.’ He offers a half-shrug. ‘Where are you going? Christmas party?’ He’s noticed the way I’m dressed. The hair and make-up. I probably look unusually glamorous, though when I checked my face in the mirror, all I saw was the violence in my eyes, the shake of my hand as I tried to apply mascara.

  ‘Yes. A work thing.’

  ‘Oh, one of your rich clients. Where? In town?’

  ‘Yep, just off Marylebone High Street.’ The same lie I told Justin, just in case.

  Vic eyes the wine bag hanging from my arm. ‘I hope there’s the family brand in there.’ The humour is a little galling – he’s acting as if he never betrayed me and we’re still buddies – but I’ll let it go. I don’t have time for another difference of opinion.

  ‘Sorry, but I need to get going,’ I tell him. ‘Justin is home, though, if you want to go in and have a drink with him?’

  ‘No, I’m good. I’ll drop you at the station,’ he offers.

  ‘Don’t be silly, it’s just a couple of minutes’ walk.’

  ‘Humour me.’

  ‘Why, Vic?’

  ‘Because I need to tell you something,’ he says, smiling in defeat. ‘Please, just get in.’

  Grumbling, I do as he says. The van has the malty, toasty aroma of a pub at opening time. I place my handbag in the footwell and keep the wine on my lap. Vic indicates to an empty street and pulls away. Soon, Tanglewood Road becomes a cosy blur of amber rectangles and blinking Christmas lights.

  ‘Have you had any more contact with Kieran since we spoke?’ he asks.

  ‘No. And if I had, I wouldn’t tell you.’

  There’s an uneasy pause. ‘You haven’t… You haven’t done anything careless, have you, Ellen?’

  ‘Careless? You mean like driving a car into a reservoir with him in the passenger seat?’

  He blanches and I apologize.

  ‘No, my fault,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t have used that word.’

  ‘Just tell me what it is you want to tell me, Vic.’

  ‘Okay.’ He doesn’t like my mood, I can tell, but he must assume he’s at least partly responsible for it. ‘India is pregnant,’ he says.

  There is a stretched-out moment of pain. The world outside the window shimmers like a migraine. ‘Congratulations,’ I say, at last. One word, but the ache in my chest makes it hard to say it. ‘You could have told me that over the phone, you know.’

  It’s bad news that needs to be given in person. A faraway voice over the police radio. Officers at the door.

  ‘I know I could.’ He pauses to brake at the junction. His expression is rueful, as if one unenviable job has been completed, but another remains.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘We just had the second scan. It’s a boy.’

  The world goes still. Suddenly, the van smells turn my stomach. I see the two of us at Lucas’s scan. I’m smiling, asking the technician if she can see if it’s a boy or a girl. She says, ‘Do you both want to know?’

  ‘Yes!’

  How many times must she have taken part in that exchange and yet her delight was sincere, I was sure of it.

  ‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ I say, and I blink into sudden oncoming headlights, grateful for the dazzle. For a terrible moment I think I won’t be able to move fro
m my seat. I won’t be able to get on the train and go to The Heights. ‘I’m happy for you both. Really.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Vic says. ‘That means a lot.’

  We’re on the move again, already slowing for a red light before the turn into the station. Vic’s concerns do not seem to have been entirely eased. ‘Like I said on the phone, Kieran’s on his guard. You should be on yours too.’

  The lights turn green. ‘Vic, this is nothing to do with you now. We agreed.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean I don’t care.’ He’s pulling over by the station entrance. The next train is in six minutes. It is not a fast service, but will snake through Crystal Palace and Dulwich, delivering me to London Bridge in thirty-five minutes.

  ‘You want some company at this party?’ he says impulsively. ‘I can easily park and come with you if you like?’

  ‘No. I said this is nothing to do with you.’ I open the door. The woven handles of the wine bag dig into my wrist where the glove ends. ‘Go back home to India. She’s the one who needs you now, not me. Thank you for the lift.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  I’m halfway to the barriers when I hear him calling after me and I turn, frowning. He’s wound down the passenger window. ‘What?’

  ‘You forgot your bag.’

  Trying not to gasp, I scurry back, reach through the open window and tear it from his hands. Was there time for him to unbuckle, unzip, look inside, then zip and buckle it up again? While keeping control of a car?

  No. No way. His face, when I glance at him, is impassive, his attention on the rear-view and the car behind that’s agitating for his spot.

  I head into the station a second time.

  Chapter 35

  The hostess is wearing a dress covered in those huge silver sequins that look like scales. A mermaid of the night. Her boyfriend is a classic financial services type: conceited gaze, alcoholic flush, box-fresh party shirt. The flat is rammed with others from the same tribe – affluent, international and, I’m guessing, unaccustomed to having their fun spoiled. They can’t possibly know they have a cuckoo in their nest and, for Asha’s sake, I hope that whatever unfolds tonight no feathers will fly here on the fifth floor.

  May she only benefit from her brush with notoriety.

  The music is, inevitably, Christmassy. ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ plays as I arrive and ‘Santa Baby’ will follow, I expect. (All I Want for Christmas Is You, Kieran.) Asha has solved the lighting issue by turning them all off, but for several hundred metres of string lights and an enormous neon reindeer head mounted on the living room wall. There are a dangerous number of candles, too, and I’m presuming these are the source of the rich plum-pudding miasma that envelops the throng.

  ‘This is our lighting designer,’ she tells her already pie-eyed partner – Sebastian? Anthony? A Brideshead kind of name – who quips about always being the last to know while making it clear he’s entitled to be the first.

  He presses a glass of champagne into my hand and I raise it to my lips. I need to be careful not to drink more than a couple of mouthfuls, but it is gloriously icy and I long to suck it down in one.

  ‘Did you bring your architect?’ Asha asks. ‘The one from Habitus you work with?’

  ‘No, he couldn’t make it, I’m afraid. We’ll set up a proper meeting in the New Year.’ I haven’t asked any architect, of course. Chances are I’ll be in no position to take on the work. In my mind’s eye, I see myself in the New Year in a police interview room or even in a cell, sleeping on the same standard-issue mattress Kieran Watts did years ago.

  ‘I told you the guy in the top flat is coming, didn’t I?’ she says, on cue. ‘In case I get sidetracked, you can’t miss him. He’s got bleached hair – a bit like yours, actually. Maybe you’ve got the same hairdresser.’

  A polite smile conceals my sharp intake of breath.

  ‘Oh, he won’t show up,’ Asha’s man says. ‘He’s a total recluse. He barely answers the door.’

  ‘He will. I told you, he’s trying to poach Ellen.’

  ‘She’s not a wild animal, Ash!’

  I laugh, wondering if they will repeat all of this later when the police come. Asha’s remembered the name of the architects; she obviously has excellent recall. One dilemma is resolved, in any case. I am easily going to be able to slip away without being seen. It’s going to be impossible for people to account for others in this crush, especially someone they were never introduced to.

  As my hosts are claimed by other guests, I find Selena in front of me, leaning in to kiss first one cheek and then the other. It startles me to see her here, though I should have guessed since she’s our connection in the first place. That call I made to her the night Freya went to Kieran’s place: if she were to mention that to the police, would that suggest premeditation? But watching and planning are two separate activities, aren’t they?

  (You may well scoff at all this – there’s the small matter of the gun in my bag, right?)

  ‘Careful of the window,’ she says, steering me through the moving crowd and away from the opening, that dark hungry drop. With a little polite struggling, I’m in the corner of the room, with a view across the entire assembly. ‘Oh, did I tell you, Ellen, I remembered something weird that I did once? I was at the zoo and I totally had the urge to throw my bag into one of the enclosures. Is that the same as your thing?’

  I try to engage, to be normal. ‘Kind of. You wouldn’t have got your bag back, so it does sound like an urge to self-sabotage.’

  ‘Definitely. They were African hunting dogs, they’d have torn it to pieces. I didn’t do it, though. Like you said, you don’t act on it, you just feel deranged for a couple of seconds and then you come to your senses.’ As she laughs, her teeth flawless, breath sweet, I lay my hand on my own bag, protecting it like a pregnant belly.

  ‘I have to tell you what happened today with the builders…’ As she segues into a new anecdote, I feel the hairs on my arms rise and I search over her shoulder for the cause. There it is, in the doorway: a bleached-blonde top of a head, a fragment of wax-smooth forehead. Kieran. I can’t see his eyes, but I can tell from the way his head is angled he’s looking in my direction and I give an involuntary shudder.

  ‘What?’ Selena swivels to follow my gaze, but she’s shorter than me and her view is obscured. She turns back, continuing to prattle, and in doing so creates the gap needed for Kieran and me to lock eyes. Again, I shudder and again she turns, mid-flow, still unable to catch a glimpse of what’s spooked me. It’s as if I’m the only one who can see him, the only one to identify his cold-blooded presence in this hot-blooded crowd.

  Should I point him out to her? Would that harm my defence or somehow help protect me? Before I can decide, there’s another adjustment within the throng as a couple arrives with what must be a dozen balloons, huge and shiny and shaped like Christmas trees. By the time the shrieks of delight have faded, the balloons set loose to bob above our heads, Kieran is gone. I doubt he even bothered to make himself known to Asha or her man. He just did what he came to do and left.

  ‘I must use the bathroom,’ I tell Selena. ‘Do you know other people here?’

  ‘No, but when has that ever stopped me,’ she says conspiratorially, as if I’ve known her for years. I touch her arm and smile, then slip through the swarm and out of the front door.

  On the landing, the temperature dips by about five degrees. I can hear the lift rumbling and I know it is delivering Kieran to the top floor. I take my gloves from my pocket and put them on. A wild, heightened feeling rips through me as I push open the door to the stairs, a visceral recognition of the momentousness of the occasion. I’m as certain as I’ve ever been that what happens next will come to be questioned, recounted, reconstructed.

  In half an hour’s time – less than that – one of us could be dead.

  Chapter 36

  Do I have your sympathy at all, dear reader? It’s so hard to judge. How proper writers do it, I really don’t know. Invest their
hearts and souls in their work with no guarantee that it will be liked – or even interpreted as they intend it to be.

  One thing I can be sure of: if I don’t have your sympathy now, then what I tell you next is definitely not going to help.

  I take the stairs quickly. Up that featureless well, with its portholes onto the lightless brick wall of the building next door. The creaks from the lift shaft, the odour of cleaning products blending with that of the cloying spiced pudding that has attached itself to me. I arrive at the top out of breath, but the absence of pain in my thigh muscles tells me just how much adrenaline is swamping my system. All sensation is centred in my stomach; it’s as if the flesh has been scooped out and the hollow crammed with nerves.

  When I knock on his door, the sound blunted by gloved knuckles, it gives way. He’s left it ajar – of course he has. He knows I’m in the building for him, he knows my attendance at Asha’s party is for his benefit. He is as prepared for me as I am him.

  I step inside, scanning jaundiced walls for cameras, finding none. Exactly as in Asha’s flat five floors below, a narrow hallway leads left to the living room and right to the bathroom and bedrooms. I turn left. Music is playing, not the festive anthems of five floors below, but the soundtrack to a wake, a female voice lamenting in dark, mournful tones. At first, I think she’s singing a language I don’t know, but then I realize these are not words, but something invented, and the strange melodies snake around me.

  Through the curved window, Tower Bridge glows white and blue and, as I move forward, the top of the Shard comes into range, a festive silver steeple for the godless. I imagine Freya standing up against this glass, Red Riding Hood in a mustard-yellow coat, the wolf right beside her with a paw on the small of her back. That gruff voice saying, ‘The view’s even better from the roof.’