He finally worked up the courage to get out of the bath and sat shivering on his bed with a towel wrapped around him, looking at his phone on the floor in the corner where he’d dropped it. He’d turned it off after the third time Carl called, but he knew he couldn’t ignore him for much longer. Carl and Meredith. Meredith and Carl. There was no way Carl’s calling him now was just a coincidence. And then there was Keith. Maybe he should call Peggy first, see what had happened. He couldn’t really have hurt him that badly, surely?
He went to the living room and sat with his phone, switching between the two numbers, unable to make a decision. Eventually, he pressed “call.” Digging his fingernails into his arm, he waited for Carl to answer, the silence horribly absolute. He was suddenly desperate to puncture the stillness, and he rushed over to his record player and clumsily dropped the needle, Ella’s voice filling the room. It was the closest to backup he was ever going to get. He walked around the train tracks in a figure eight, the phone still ringing out.
“Hello, Andrew.”
“Hello.”
There was a pause.
“Well?” Andrew said.
“Well what?”
“I’m returning your call, Carl. What do you want?”
Andrew heard Carl swallow. A disgusting protein shake no doubt.
“I met one of your colleagues last week,” Carl said. “Meredith.”
Andrew’s head swam violently, and he crumpled slowly to his knees.
“She came to a yoga class of mine. Business has been slow, so it was only her and a few others. We’ve not been able to afford proper advertising, of course.”
“Right,” Andrew said, clinging on to the slimmest hope that Carl wasn’t going where he thought he was with this.
“We got to chatting after the class,” Carl said. “It was a bit awkward, really. She suddenly started going on about some miserable affair she’s having. I don’t know why she thought I’d be interested. I was desperate to get rid of her and then suddenly, out of the blue, she mentioned where she worked. And, lo and behold, it was with you. Small world, isn’t it?”
Andrew considered hanging up. He could take the SIM from his phone and flush it away and never have to speak to Carl again.
“Andrew, are you still there?”
“Yes,” Andrew said, through gritted teeth.
“Good,” Carl said. “I thought someone might be distracting you. Diane, perhaps. Or maybe the kids.”
Andrew balled his free hand into a fist and bit down on it hard until he could taste blood.
“It’s funny how our memories distort,” Carl said. Andrew could tell he was trying to keep his voice level. “Because I could have sworn that you lived on your own in a bedsit just off the Old Kent Road, that you hadn’t been in a relationship since . . . well . . . But according to this Meredith person you’re a happily married father of two living in a fancy town house.” Carl’s voice was vibrating with repressed anger. “And there are only two explanations there. Either Meredith has got things spectacularly wrong, or it means you’ve been lying to her and god knows who else about having a wife and children, and Christ I hope it’s the first one, because if it’s the second then I think that might be the most pathetic, awful thing I’ve ever heard. And I can only imagine what your boss would think of that, were he to find out. You’re working with vulnerable people a lot of the time, and for the council too. I can’t imagine such a revelation would go down particularly well, do you?”
Andrew brought his hand away from his mouth and saw the cartoonish bite mark on his skin. A memory swam into his mind of Sally throwing a half-finished apple over a hedge and protesting to their mother when she told her off.
“What do you want?” he said quietly. At first there was no reply. Just the sound of their breathing. Then Carl spoke.
“You ruined everything. Sally could have gotten better, I know she could, if only you’d made things right. But now she’s gone. And guess what? I spoke to her lawyer today, and she tells me that the money—Sally’s life savings, just to remind you, Andrew—will be paid to you any day now. Christ, if only she’d known the sort of person you really are. Do you honestly think she’d have done the same thing?”
“I don’t . . . That’s not . . .”
“Shut up and listen,” Carl said. “Given the fact I now know just how much of a liar you are, let me make it very clear what’s going to happen if you decide to go back on your promise to give me what’s mine. I’m going to text you my bank details, right now. And if you don’t transfer the money to me the moment you get it, then all it takes is one phone call to Meredith, and everything’s over for you. Everything. Got that? Good.”
With that, he hung up.
Andrew took the phone away from his ear and gradually his brain tuned back in to Ella’s voice: It wouldn’t be make-believe, if you believed in me. He immediately logged in to his online banking on his phone. When the screen showed his account, it took him a moment to realize what he was looking at: the money was already there. His phone vibrated—Carl’s bank details. Andrew started a new transfer, entering Carl’s details, his heart racing. One more click, and the money would be gone, and this would be over. But, despite every instinct, something stopped him. For all of Carl’s words about what Sally would make of his lies, would she really take a better view of what Carl was doing right now? This money was the last thing that connected him and Sally. It had been his sister’s last gift to him. The last emblem of their bond.
Before he could stop himself, he’d hit “cancel,” dropping the phone onto the carpet and putting his head into his hands, taking long, calming breaths.
He’d been sitting on the floor, thoughts flitting between weary defeat and desperate panic, when his phone rang again. He was half expecting it to be Carl—that somehow he’d worked out Andrew had the money already—but it was Peggy.
“Hello?” he said. The background noise was chaotic, people shouting over each other, clamoring to have their voice heard.
“Hello?” he said again.
“Is that Andrew?”
“Yes, who’s this?”
“It’s Maisie. Hang on. Mum? Mum? I’ve got him.”
Andrew heard a collective “Whoa!” and the sound of blaring horns, then everything went muffled with the sound of fingers scrabbling at the phone.
“Andrew?”
“Peggy? Are you okay? Did Keith—”
“You were right about Steve. Got back and he was shouting at the girls, drunk out of his skull and on god knows what else. I can’t do it anymore, I just can’t. Grabbed as much stuff as I could and shoved the girls into the car. Steve was too busy smashing the place up to stop me leaving but he jumped on his motorbike and came after me.”
“Shit, are you all right?”
Another horn blared.
“Yes, well no, not really. I’m so sorry, Andrew, I should have believed you earlier.”
“It doesn’t matter, I don’t care—I just want to know you’re safe.”
“Yeah, we are. I think I’ve lost him. But the thing is, look, I know it’s late and everything but I’ve tried everyone else and . . . I wouldn’t normally ask but . . . could we come to yours, just for an hour or something, till I figure out what to do?”
“Yes, of course,” Andrew said.
“You’re a lifesaver. We won’t be a hassle, I promise. Okay, what’s your address? Maisie, grab that pen, darling, I need you to write Andrew’s address down for me.”
Andrew felt his stomach somersault as he realized what he’d just agreed to.
“Andrew?”
“Yes, I’m here, I’m here.”
“Thank god. What’s your address?”
What could he do? He had no choice but to tell her. And almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth the line went dead.
“It’s fine,” h
e said out loud, the words swallowed by the yawning indifference of his flat, the four walls that comprised living room, kitchen and bedroom seeming to have encroached.
Okay, let’s look at this logically, he thought. Maybe this could be a second house? A little place he had all to himself for a bit of . . . what was that dreadful phrase Meredith had said the other day? “Me time,” that was it. He turned slowly on the spot and took the place in, trying to imagine it was the first time he’d seen it. It was no good. It felt too lived-in to be anywhere other than his home.
I’m going to tell her everything.
The thought caught him off guard. Moments later came the sound of a car pulling up outside. He looked around. Maybe he should try to clear up—though there was hardly any mess. As usual, there were one plate, one knife and fork, one glass, and a single saucepan on the draining board. Nothing else was out of place. God, what was the use?
He took one last look around, then grabbed his keys and headed for the door. Down the stairs. Past the scuff marks. Through the faint cloud of perfume. The lower he got, the colder the air became, and he felt his confidence starting to drain with it.
No, you’ve got to do it, he urged himself. Do it. Don’t turn back now.
He was in the corridor, just one set of doors separating him from Peggy and the girls, their shapes blurred through the frosted glass.
Do it. No going back.
His hand was on the door handle. His legs were shaking so much he thought they might give way. Things just have to get worse before they can get better. Do it, you fucking coward—do it.
Peggy threw her arms around him and he felt her tears on his cheeks. He hugged her back so tightly he could feel her loosen her own grip in surprise.
“Hey now, hey,” she whispered, and the softness of it brought tears swimming into his own eyes. He could see Suze trying to carry three different bags out of the car at once, struggling to keep her balance. Maisie was at her side, her face pale, her arms folded tightly around herself. Peggy put her hands on Andrew’s chest. “Shall we go inside?” she said. Andrew watched her eyes searching his, concern now dawning.
“Andrew . . . ?”
— CHAPTER 27 —
Andrew was sitting on a dead man’s bed wondering if he’d broken his foot. It had ballooned up grotesquely since last night, fluid expanding underneath spongy flesh, and it was now throbbing and hot, as if infection were setting in. He hadn’t been able to fit a shoe on it that morning—the best he could do was a knackered old flip-flop he’d found at the bottom of a cupboard. The pain was excruciating, but nowhere near as bad as what he felt when he closed his eyes and pictured again the disappointment dawning on Peggy’s face.
It had all happened in such a blur—his garbled apology to her and the girls (no, sorry, they couldn’t come in after all, he was so so sorry, he’d explain when he could, it just wasn’t possible tonight)—then the confusion on Peggy’s face, and the hurt, and finally the disappointment. He’d fled inside, unable to watch Peggy shepherding her confused daughters back into the car, jamming his fingers in his ears so he couldn’t hear them questioning why they were leaving already. He was back in the corridor, past the scuff marks and through the cloud of perfume, and up the stairs, and inside, and then he was listening helplessly as the car drove off, and when he could no longer hear its engine he looked down and saw the train set laid out with all its precision and care and expense and then he was kicking and stamping at it, bits of track and scenery slamming against the walls, until all that was left was carnage blanketed by silence. He hadn’t felt a thing at first, but then the adrenaline wore off and the pain hit him in a dull, sickening wave. He crawled to the kitchen and found some frozen peas, then searched the cupboard next to him, optimistically hoping to find a first aid kit. Instead, there were two bottles of cooking wine covered in a thick film of dust. He drank half a bottle in one go, until his throat stung and the wine spilled over his mouth and down his neck. He shifted so he was sitting against the fridge, and that’s where he eventually fell into a fitful sleep, waking just after three and crawling to his bed. He lay there, tears leaking down his cheeks, and thought of Peggy driving through the night, her face intermittently illuminated by streetlights, pale and afraid.
He’d turned off his phone and thrown it in a drawer in the kitchen. He couldn’t bear to hear from anyone about anything. He still had no idea what had happened to Keith. Maybe he’d already been fired for hurting him like that.
When the morning came, he couldn’t think what to do other than carrying out the property inspection he’d been scheduled to do. He sat on the tube among the rush-hour commuters, the pain in his foot now so severe it strangely emboldened him to stare at everyone in turn, feeling miserable at just how much he wanted someone to ask if he was okay.
The address for the property inspection had rung a bell, but it was only when he’d limped onto the estate that he recognized it as the place he and Peggy had come on her first day. (Eric, was that the man’s name?) As he prepared himself to enter the property of the late Trevor Anderson, he looked across the rain-slick concrete slabs, a hopscotch game still faintly outlined, and saw a man carrying two off-license bags’ worth of shopping struggling to open the door to the flat where Eric had lived. Andrew wondered if the man knew about what had happened there. How many thousands of other people, in fact, might at that very moment be about to open the door to a house where the last occupant had died and rotted without anybody noticing.
* * *
—
According to the coroner, Trevor Anderson had died having slipped and banged his head on the bathroom floor, adding that conditions in the house were “pretty poor” in the bored tone of someone reviewing a disappointing quiche from a gastropub. Andrew had put on his protective clothes, forcing himself to ignore a fresh wave of pain in his foot, and observed his usual ritual of reminding himself why he was there and how he should behave, before going inside.
It had been clear Trevor had found it hard to cope in his last days. Rubbish was piled up in the corner of the living room—the collection of stains on one particular spot of the wall suggesting various things had been thrown at it before sliding down to join the pile. There was a fiercely strong smell of urine because of the bottles and cans of all sizes filled to the brim, which were spread out in a halo around a small wooden stool just feet from a television on the floor. The only other things that could count as possessions were a pile of clothes and a bicycle wheel resting up against a beige radiator shot with scorch marks. Andrew had searched through the rubbish but knew in his heart of hearts that he’d find nothing. He’d gotten to his feet and peeled off his gloves. In the side of the room that functioned as the kitchen, the oven door hung open in a silent scream. The freezer buzzed for a moment, then clicked off again.
He’d hobbled into the bedroom, once separated from the living room by a door, but now just by a thin sheet secured by parcel tape. Next to the bed was a mirror, flecked with shaving foam, leaning up against the wall, along with a bedside table improvised from four shoeboxes.
The pain had suddenly been too much and Andrew had been forced to hop over and sit on the bed. There was a book on top of the shoeboxes, an autobiography of a golfer he’d never heard of, the cheesy smile and baggy suit placing it firmly in the 1980s. He opened the book at random and read a paragraph about a particularly arduous bunker experience at the Phoenix Open. A few pages on, a lighthearted anecdote about a charity match and too much free cava. As he flicked forward again something came loose and fell into his lap. It was a train ticket, twelve years old: a return from Euston to Tamworth. On the back there was an advert for the Samaritans. “We don’t just hear you, we listen.” Below, in a small patch of white space, something had been drawn in green pen.
Andrew spent a long time studying Trevor’s drawing. He knew it was his, because it consisted of three simple oblongs, each with a name and dates insid
e them:
Willy Humphrey Anderson: 1938–1980
Portia Maria Anderson: 1936–1989
Trevor Humphrey Anderson: 1964–????
The only other words: Glascote Cemetery—Tamworth.
Andrew had so many questions. Had the drawing been intended for someone specific to see, or purely for the first person who found it? How many years after this man had drawn where he wanted to be buried had he sat waiting for death?
Andrew wanted to think that Trevor Anderson had lived a life of glorious hedonism. That this little piece of admin was a rare moment of practical planning in among the chaotic fun. Looking around at the grimy flat, Andrew realized this was a desperately optimistic assessment. The reality would be that in the last few years Trevor would have opened his eyes each morning, checked for sure that he wasn’t dead, and gotten up. Until one day he didn’t.
It was the waiting, that was the worst part—when the days were exclusively about eating enough food and drinking enough water to keep yourself alive. Maintenance. That was all it was. Andrew suddenly thought of Keith’s dull eyes the moment before he crashed to the ground. Christ, what had he done? At some point he’d have to face the consequences. And then there was Carl. How was he to deal with that? He could simply fold and transfer the money. But would that really be the end of it? Carl seemed so angry and bitter . . . What was to stop him from flipping at any moment and picking up the phone to Meredith? The waiting. It would be torture. He could never truly think about being happy with that hanging over him. And then there was Peggy. He thought of that afternoon in Northumberland. At the time he’d felt so full of possibility, convinced that everything was going to change. How wrong he had been. There was no way he could expect Peggy to understand his lies, not after he’d refused to help her when she’d needed him most.
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