Empty, throbbing silence, quiet as a spreading bruise.
Phew, plus: goddamn painful hip!
Joseph rubs it long and hard while hopping on the other foot, until: man, the smell in this boot room sort of overtakes him sensory-input-wise, it being just so boot room in here.
Meaning, thank God: not everything changes.
But look at that: there on his shelf sits a pair of his old trainers, and when he picks one up and sticks his nose in it he finds the smell of himself has long since gone.
Which reinforces the fact that many things, including some a lot more important than this formerly smelly shoe, do in fact, whether we like it or not, change.
Oh God, what else has time, with Naomi’s help, edited out?
Joseph hobbles round himself in a small circle. It’s a fair-sized boot room, after all.
Look, she could have thrown these shoes away, but she didn’t: perhaps it’s actually a good sign?
Ha.
He carefully returns the trainers to their shelf, placing his dirty boots next to them for good measure.
It’s only twelve fifteen, ages to go before the family returns from school and work. Those hours, now he’s back in the house – his house – are suddenly vertiginous with possibility.
What should he do first?
87
Well, his old shoes may no longer smell of him, but those boots certainly do, as does he, in person. He needs a good shower. That’s not where he heads first, though, the pull of the fridge being just too strong. It makes him set off back across the hall, down the long wood-panelled corridor past the dining and games rooms, towards the shut door of the kitchen.
When he opens it all hell breaks loose.
Gordon, all thirty, furry, kilograms of him, leaps straight for Joseph’s face, barking and wagging and licking and falling back to bounce, barking, straight up at his chest again.
Joseph staggers sideways, sinks to his knees, takes hold of the dog’s ears, pulls its head under his chin, all the while saying, ‘Shhh, shhh, shhh.’
He wants the dog to shut up, of course he does, but man, this all-forgiving love is overwhelming.
What’s the dog doing home alone anyway?
Who cares?
Joseph has missed him.
He holds the dog side-on, feels its quick heartbeat against his own ribcage, sits like that, waits until they are both calm.
‘Good boy, good boy,’ he says.
There’s a chorizo sausage in the fridge. Joseph hacks off some big slices, tosses half of them in the air for Gordon to catch, and slots the rest into a cream cheese bagel. This he eats with two handfuls of cherry tomatoes, washed down with many big pulpy swigs of orange juice direct from the carton. He doesn’t bother to sit down to eat and drink, just leans on one of the eighties, Shaker-style units which Naomi simply refused point-blank always and for ever to change, thinking that he actually quite likes the shabby chic look today.
Real wood, at least, if a bit dated.
He eats two apples, a satsuma and a punnet of strawberries next.
Sweet Jesus, the fresh, fruit-bomb taste.
Why not stash a couple of bananas in his bag while he’s at it? And a few tins from the larder shelves, these chickpeas, some kidney beans, plus pineapple chunks. He doesn’t want to weigh himself down with stuff, but the top shelf is where they kept the bottles of spirits he impressively hasn’t touched for what, eleven months now, and that tube there contains a twenty-year-old Oban single malt whisky, and – he’s not even thought about having a drink in ages! Meaning he’s surely in the clear? Whatever – he can’t resist it.
What’s this on the back of the kitchen chair? One of Naomi’s cotton scarves. He presses his face into the softness of it, then remembers he’s still unclean, so to speak, and needs a shower. With Gordon safely behind the kitchen door, he passes the piano en route upstairs and pauses to note that the music on the stand is way fuller of, well, notes, than it used to be, but at least this change is progress, go Lara, good girl!
In the third spare room, his room for those last few weeks after Naomi’s ultimatum, he sets down his bag and hangs his dirty clothes over the back of the chair. The shower in this en suite is a long way from the twin boilers. Takes an age to warm up. As he’s standing on the mat waiting he glances sideways and catches sight of himself in the full-length mirror.
88
Oh.
As in, he actually gulps, and gulps again, to see his Adam’s apple – yes, it’s really doing it – roll visibly beneath the bristles covering his now scrawny throat.
He stands sideways, sees the pale hook of himself in profile, turns further and is shocked again by the new fragility of his shoulder blades, the dents above them, the wrinkled back of his neck. Hmm. That hip is an angry red. But, stepping closer to the mirror, he’s more worried about the yellow-purple scratch beneath that eye. It’s painful when he pulls a Popeye wink, but the pain isn’t stopping him seeing all this, is it? No. Stand back again then, relish the slashes of colour within the general dirty-milk hue of everything else.
The shower is filling with steam now.
He slips inside, draws the doors to behind him, bows his head, shuts his eyes tight, edges beneath the torrent, gasps.
It’s a hug from every side, a great falling relief.
With the water drumming hard on his neck and shoulders and head, Joseph opens his eyes again to see the pooling water beneath his feet. It is streaked grey. So what? Soon the tray is full of suds anyway, and after that the water runs perfectly clear down the plug hole, and by now the enveloping heat and rushing wetness has pulled Joseph to the surface of himself again; that’s his blood pink beneath the skin of his inner forearm, his newly lean upper chest, the fronts of thighs and shins, and it’s as if the shower is cleaning him inside as well as outside, or at the very least revealing his purer self.
Purer? Pah!
Well, he’s tried.
That’s the point, though, isn’t it?
What’s the point?
It’s just there, ready to say, this point, when something about his staring at the shampoos and body washes and conditioners draws him up short. That thing there, behind the loofah. What is it?
A razor.
So?
He reaches for it.
Is he about to have a shave?
No, no, no.
There’s something very wrong with this razor.
What?
It’s not his.
Well, Naomi shaves her legs; no doubt it’s a new one she’s bought.
But this isn’t her bathroom. She uses the big one with two sinks off the master bedroom. And anyway, she always does her legs, armpits and whatnot with those pink disposable razors: she’s used the same brand for at least a decade. Joseph knows because he’s borrowed them often enough. Before he was banished from her boudoir, so to speak.
Anyway, this one is a man’s razor.
Very carefully, he returns it to its spot behind the sponge. The shower is suddenly oppressively hot. He twists the dial hard left and braces himself for the cauterising cold slap; it pulls a completely different, end-of-world gasp out of him, leaves him standing there, blowing hard, a bull in the middle of the ring.
89
Joseph shuts off the tap, pulls a towel inside the shower, pats himself slowly dry. What he’d give for a set of clean clothes. But he hasn’t any, and anyway these dirty clothes are, at least, part of the new him. He puts them on like pieces of armour: armoured pants, armoured trousers, armoured top and shirt and jacket, even his armoured semi-full backpack, everything but the dirty socks, which he rams into a pocket, preferring the cool feel of the bathroom floor beneath the soles of his feet.
He pulls open the mirrored door of the bathroom cabinet, checking inside to see if he can find – yes, he knew it! – a squirter of shaving gel.
Clinique For Men, no less.
He sniffs it.
Fancy.
Joseph shuts the cabi
net door and fingers his beard. It feels softer now he’s washed. He decides to keep it, for good. That look in his eye is unsettling: baleful almost. He feels light on his toes. Where are they taking him? Back out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, of course.
The third spare bedroom, as was.
His room after that.
Somebody else’s room now?
Serves him right, thinks Joseph, regarding the bed. If he’d brought Heidi Sparks in here instead of into his and Naomi’s room might Naomi not have taken it so badly? Don’t be stupid. He didn’t actually fuck Heidi Sparks in the marital bed, but yes, he did have her over the dressing table, the one he used to keep his cufflinks on, plus mahogany-backed clothes brush, loose foreign change, expense receipts, and so on. Fiddly stuff, coins and cufflinks; much of it ended up on the floor.
What did he do it for?
Isn’t it obvious?
Well, yes. But why in their room, for God’s sake? Couldn’t he have taken her to a hotel or something? Even an outbuilding. The gazebo, for example, down the bottom of the …
Just shut up.
Fact is, nothing is obvious at all. He doesn’t really know why he did it, and that’s the truth. Blame the automatic pilot; the little bastard has a kamikaze streak. Joseph and Heidi had sunk a third of a bottle of vodka brainstorming at the kitchen table before he took her upstairs: perhaps that had something to do with it?
Did he take her or was it her suggestion?
He can’t quite remember.
But he can remember, most clearly, that Naomi had given him her ultimatum just a week or two beforehand: ‘One minute you’re screaming at the kids for no reason, the next staring into space. Zac said you threw his shepherd’s pie at the fridge yesterday, because he asked for ketchup? You’re scaring them. You need to see someone, get help, or else you have to leave.’
Well, he’d seen someone! Not quite what she meant, though, was it?
No, but—
Enough excuses!
All that’s ancient history; that’s not why he’s here now, pulling open drawers and checking the walk-in wardrobe, for, yes, a monogrammed dressing gown, thick black-and-gold stripes of softness hanging in the otherwise vacated space. No shirts, no signs of the daily humdrum, and that’s something, he guesses, but not really very much, because that definitely isn’t Naomi’s dressing gown, is it, and the bastard thing certainly doesn’t belong to him.
90
Joseph backs out of the cupboard and sits down on the foot of the bed. From here, through the big window he can see a familiar serrated horizon of pines. They are blue-green in the afternoon sun. What’s that hill called again? He can’t remember, possibly never knew. Doesn’t matter anyway: it’s not his to look at now, is it? Whoever wears that dressing gown is free to pull back the floor-length curtains on a Sunday morning, sit here on the end of bed, and take in the lovely view.
Look, it’s the third spare room. If she was seeing someone, this stuff would be in the master bedroom, surely?
He almost convinces himself there’s mileage in this explanation, but then remembers the kids. She’d want to protect them, for appearance’s sake, wouldn’t she?
Possibly.
Either way, he doesn’t blame her.
It’s just that things do change.
Like him!
That being the point.
Ah yes, the point again. He remembers now: the point was all about change. He’d changed, and he wanted to show it, prove it in fact, by doing something, something grand and good and unexpected and final.
Don’t over-egg it.
We give according to our means.
One good thing.
That’s all he’s done.
Or has he, though? Yes, that’s the point! Here, in the house, he can check. Check what? That he succeeded in what he set out to do. Yes, and given the state of play, meaning his current situation, or predicament, or proximity to the finishing line, so to speak, well, it would be quite something to face that with a bit of a sense that it, meaning everything, has been worthwhile, meaning goddamn worth it.
91
Joseph has made his way into the study. Lovely smell here, too. Polish-based. He takes a deep breath, noticing anew that there’s a lot to polish: the double-depth teak shelves, for a start, stacked as they are with art and architecture books purchased by the yard, and the ammonite collection, bought in its entirety online, and marvellous to look at until Naomi’s ‘Really, you’re sure they’re not fake?’ put him off a bit, plus of course the ceiling-to-floor oak panelling along that wall, which Joseph had installed by that little chap from Pembrokeshire, Alwyn something; he always wore a cap and actually doffed it, yes, old-school deferential in every way, he was, except perhaps for the size of his invoice.
There’s the big old desk, too, which came out of an actual captain’s cabin, and the iMac plonked on it, a little too twenty-first century, perhaps, given the rest of the room’s aged weight, but still there, still plugged in, and still … yes … working.
What’s this, though? Joseph retypes the password slowly, but no joy, meaning: she’s changed it.
Damn.
Undeterred, Joseph jog-hobbles back through the house in search of another device: Lara’s laptop, Zac’s, an old one of Naomi’s, one of the iPads, Kindles, a decommissioned phone, anything.
Two circuits of the big house later, back upstairs in Lara’s room, rummaging through the pile of discarded jodhpurs and tennis skirts – tennis? When did she start that? – on her bed, he hits the jackpot; yes, here’s her iPad in its familiar William Morris wallpaper cover. He bought that case for her at Tate Britain. Cue stabbing memory of taking a forty-minute call re German pension funds in the big atrium while she bored herself stupid in the gift shop. Forget that now! See instead that it’s charged. And yes, the password is still preraphaelites.
Meaning: he’s in, connected, browsing.
It’s actually quite strange to be looking at a screen again. Rocket-speed broadband, pixels dancing, the whole not-a-hole-in-the-woods world available to him again. Familiar, but alien. Like revisiting school. Ha.
Airdeen Clore, he types.
And …
News.
And boom, the news about Airdeen Clore is just there.
Because that’s how it works.
Joseph scans the headlines.
‘Airdeen Clore and Goldman Sachs U-turn on Chinese Tech Giant Options.’
‘Oil Heads Higher as Airdeen Clore Turns Bullish.’
‘Airdeen Clore Analysts Explain Why These E&P Names are Portfolio Musts.’
‘Airdeen Clore CEO Jonas Hertford Finally Finds Buyer for Hamptons Home.’
‘Airdeen Clore and Morgan Stanley Land Year’s Biggest Energy Sector Stock Offering.’
With each new page of links Joseph’s heart sinks further until – from the lightheaded feeling up top – it seems his pulse is coming from somewhere too far away to sustain him, as in, yes, wow, quick, he must drop his head beneath his knees, now! or otherwise faint.
He slumps onto the bed and hears himself groan.
What does that groan mean?
Simple: there’s no news, or rather no bad news, not for the bank, and no bad bank news, baldly displayed here in Lara’s room on the little William Morris-encased screen, though not entirely news to him, because let’s face it he’s not a complete idiot, is still very bad news indeed for the idiot known as Joseph Ashcroft.
But wait.
Just because it’s not public knowledge doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Not even a bank of Airdeen’s heft and horsepower could sail on with that big a hole in its hull. At the very least it would require a government bailout to carry on. Yes, without help, the ship of the bank would never have made it into port for repairs. And these stories of ongoing success only make sense if someone, meaning the government – meaning the taxpayer – has shored up the bank’s position.
And that, it, they, hasn’t, hadn’t, haven’t
.
Apparently slash not.
Ugh: nothing makes sense.
Joseph is crouched on all fours on Lara’s sheepskin bedspread, the screen between his hands. He rocks back on his haunches and presses his face into the softness, breathing in deeply, steadily.
Think, he thinks; think.
What if not all of the money made it out? It’s possible they – Lancaster – spotted what was happening as it happened, and did their best to shut the theft down as fast as possible, meaning they didn’t head it off entirely. Many many millions might still have made it through Milton Keynes, the Caymans, et cetera, and beyond, into the wide world, and the loss of a paltry many many millions would be easier to hide.
Yes, perhaps that’s it.
Meaning: he’s searching for news in the wrong place.
Assuming the bank has squashed the embarrassing story of the theft for now, there may still be beneficiaries out there, total strangers who he, Joseph, has helped with a handout, a Hail Mary cash pass thrown by a heaven-based playmaker straight into the end zone of their current account: boom.
Quickly he types ‘random cash gift’ into the search bar.
And here’s a new rash of stories to sift through.
Mostly they seem to be to do with wedding list etiquette and suggested ways of rewarding employees at Christmas, but this one here is at first more relevant:
‘Crackpot jackpot: unknown man gives strangers cash!’
Joseph clicks on the link, his heart in his mouth, but no, it’s just a story about a man handing out ten-dollar bills in a shopping mall outside Clearwater, Florida. Seems he was mostly generous to pre-teen girls, hence the call to security, the foot-chase through the car park, et cetera.
The rest of the page is irrelevant.
And the next.
But hold on, what’s this?
‘Anonymous Donor Reverses Fortunes of Drought-Hit Gujarati Farm Collective.’
This page, on the Gujarat Samachar news website, seems to take an age to load. So it goes, with proper anticipation! Actually, the site really is very slow. And damn, when the story does finally reveal itself, it’s not in English, but Gujarati. Of course it is! Joseph has to back up and click a ‘Translate This Page’ link, which takes another age to shimmy forward, the translation robot working hard and quixotically to produce a story that starts:
Escape and Evasion Page 22