I’d never have bought a suitcase like that. I’d never thought about it before – suppose I just accepted that it existed and it was in our flat – but bright pink, glossy, hard shell … that didn’t feel like it could ever have been in my place.
It was a mid-size, though, so I’d been right – she’d kept her options open. And now here she was.
Back.
‘Where is she?’ Pia whispered, eyes wide. ‘I should go, right?’
I was a few steps ahead of her. I could hear the TV burbling away – some repeat, A Question of Sport, I think – and see the low light of the table lamp framing the doorway like a halo.
I pushed it open, inch by inch, and my knees weakened and my heart hurt as I saw her, lying there, asleep on the sofa, Grandma’s blanket over her, remote in one hand, cold cup of tea on the floor by her phone. I stared at her, this girl I thought I’d known, and then I felt a hand on my elbow and I let it pull me back, away, outside.
‘Are you okay?’ said Pia, quietly, out front.
I didn’t think I was. I felt shaky. Weak. Relieved. Angry. Grateful. Everything.
‘I don’t think this is fair of her,’ she said, crossing her arms, and now I wanted to laugh. ‘Sod this. Sod her.’
And then: ‘You can stay at mine tonight.’
She held her hand out to me, awkwardly. Lip half-bit, risking something of herself, vulnerable. Up until now, I’d tried to respect this deal I didn’t know we had, and I’d done it out of instinct, to protect what we had, whatever that was. I didn’t ask her questions. She didn’t give me answers.
Also, of course, that was the path of least resistance. Now? Well, now I had to make a call.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I shrugged.
‘Tell her to get lost,’ she said.
‘P, I want to talk to her,’ I said. ‘I want to find out what happened.’
She shook her head.
‘Don’t. Don’t look back. Just look forwards. It won’t do you any good to look back. That’s not what all this has been about.’
‘“All this?” All this what?’
‘Us. The stuff we’ve done. It’s been about progress. “Subscribing to life in a different way”.’
‘Look,’ I said, as gently as I could. ‘Obviously I have to do this. Obviously I have to find out.’
‘But how will it help?’ she said, now a little desperately, hand on my elbow again. ‘What do you think you’ll find out? Something that’ll make it all better? You won’t. Whatever you find out will hurt you. It’s always the way. It’s better not to know. It’s better to do your own thing. Why dwell on it all?’
‘Because it’s human nature to want answers.’
‘You’re going to get hurt.’
‘I’ve been hurt this whole time. Maybe this is how I can get un-hurt.’
And then, the creak of the door, the sound of a hand sliding up its frame as she stood there, leaning against it, lit by the glow of the streetlamp just beyond us.
‘Tom,’ she said, cautiously, then: ‘Pia.’
A pause, now, as she folded her arms, any moment of warmth dissipating into the night air, rising above us, escaping.
‘Well doesn’t this look cosy.’
twenty-three
She was like an attack dog that wouldn’t give up.
She’d changed her hair slightly. It seemed shorter, the curl she used to tuck behind her ear now behind it permanently. What was that on her wrist? Pink and green thread intertwined … a friendship bracelet, like something you’d pick up on a gap year? Her white t-shirt made a light tan pop – what was the weather like in Paris right now?
All this floated through my head as she stood before me, angry.
For a while I just let her go at me, amazed by it, fascinated.
‘So don’t you for a second think I don’t know exactly what you’ve done,’ she said, quick as lightning, face like thunder. ‘Don’t you for a second think I don’t know how you met her.’
I really didn’t think this is how it would go.
Her bravado was incredible. I smirked, and sank down onto the sofa.
‘That girl, that Pia, she is odd,’ she said. ‘She’s always been odd. You don’t know the half of it – she’s a weirdo, Tom, and I know where you met her. I know what you must have done.’
‘Then tell me,’ I said, staying calm, remaining cool, keeping my cards close.
‘You went to the place, didn’t you?’
‘You don’t have to call it the place any more. You can call it what it is.’
‘How did you know about it?’
I just watched her, thoughts pinging through her mind, frustration all around her. I’d found her little secret.
‘You went and you met the others, didn’t you? How? What did they tell you about me?’
I stayed silent. My power was in my silence and it was my first taste of power in a while.
‘Because whatever they told you about me, it’s bollocks, Tom. I mean – Jesus! – how could you? How could you go there?’
‘Why do you think I went there?’
I kept my voice flat, like an amateur psychotherapist, putting it all back on her, letting her dig her own hole, letting her throw the rope over the gallows and test its strength, get it ready …
‘You went because …’ – she faltered, reset – ‘I mean, where is the trust, Tom? That’s what shocks me most. Where is the trust?’
That was bait. She was trying to reel me in. She was always good at that, the baiting, the reeling, and yes, I wanted to bite. But more than that, I wanted to see what she was fishing for; what she’d say next; how her mind worked; how this could somehow be my fault. I was looking at her clearly now, trying to remain emotionless, acting like a fight technician.
‘I told you I hadn’t gone,’ she said, near wailing, but with top notes of anger. ‘I told you – I was very clear about it – that you should just carry on. You should have trusted that I was doing something I needed to do. That maybe it was something I needed to do for us.’
Oh, but that was it. She did this for us?
‘What, you just disappearing one day?’ I snapped, and she took a step back, allowed me the floor, almost relieved it was someone else’s turn to speak. ‘Leaving me some cryptic bullshit note? What did you think that would do to me?’
‘It wasn’t about you, Tom. Not everything is about you.’
The selfish card. That was quick.
‘This was about me. This was about me being left on my own for no apparent reason and me being the only person not to know. It could have destroyed me, Hayley.’
She stood fast. No backing down. I pulled out one of my big guns.
‘You had a leaving do.’
‘You’re annoyed you weren’t invited?’
‘Annoyed?’ I said, and was she kidding? ‘No, I’m not “annoyed” I wasn’t invited. You think the worst thing about all this was not being invited to a leaving do? Annoyed is not a word that figures in this. You get annoyed a bus is late, you get annoyed a colleague speaks in hashtags.’
I stood up.
‘And how dare you talk about “trust”?’
‘You went snooping around behind my back.’
‘You disappeared!’
‘I told you to just carry on!’
‘You left me.’
‘You should have trusted me.’
‘You shouldn’t have gone. But it was worse than that, because you wouldn’t even admit to me that you had.’
‘I didn’t leave you!’
‘No, you did worse. You threw me in limbo to go God knows where with God knows who. Except I do know. And believe me, you can slate Pia all you want, but you left me to go and do one of the strangest, most pathetic things I’ve ever heard about. I feel sorry for you. That’s my overwhelming feeling right now. And I know that’s something people usually say in soap operas or films when they want to take the moral high ground and hide that they’ve been hurt, but with me it is absolutely true. I, Tom,
feel sorry for you, Hayley.’
She steadied herself on a chair, then sat.
Silence.
‘Why do you do it?’ I said. ‘Why do you follow?’
She said nothing, just looked up at me, all doe-eyed, a real Princess Di of a look, and without warning the words began to tumble out of her like she’d had them ready for years.
Hayley Grace Anderson was not who I thought she was, but more than that, she was never who I thought she’d been.
She’d sat me down, when we’d first met, and taken me through her photographs. Happy summer days, life outdoors, green green fields and bunting. Some big manor house of a school, a life ruled by hockey and lacrosse, and as far away from the grey custard and cold chips of my Fishponds state school as she could get.
They’d shown me, I thought, a girl well brought-up, well adjusted, happy. I knew now these showed the best days of her life.
She’d been sent off to boarding school aged twelve, away from her parents five days a week, and just floating, longing to belong. Soon, she found herself hanging out with the most popular girl in her year. They became inseparable, the friendship bright and vital. Except that girl had a family to go to. Except that girl had friends outside, friends from back home. Hayley demanded more and more from her – her commitment, her time, and her love – until her friend turned on her. Cut her off. Her whole identity depended on that girl, who broke her heart and left her with nothing.
‘I think on some levels I’ve always done it,’ she said, her eyes filling and pleading with me. ‘I’ve always adapted who I am based on what I thought people wanted me to be. Or what they wanted to hear, so I could be closer to what I wanted … I was never myself until I could be someone else … maybe my personality isn’t strong enough, or maybe that is my personality, but it’s who I’ve always been … it made me efficient. At making friends. Contacts. And it makes me scared, Tom, because do I want what I want, or do I just want what other people seem to want? Have I lost who I am? Is it too late for me?’
I began to understand, I think.
To protect herself, that first time, Hayley had needed another Someone Special. And that had become the story of her life. Change, adapt, please, all to satisfy this need to be liked. And then, at a university she personally wasn’t drawn to, while doing a course someone else’s heart was in, she met an American student in a lowdown dive bar who drank red wine and smoked Spanish tobacco and acted like the wisest twenty-three-year-old the world had ever seen. He told her about Ezra Cockroft’s theories. They so chimed with her own that she fell in love with them. She studied them, became if at first not a convert then at least an enthusiastic amateur.
‘And it worked!’ she said, now, here, in our flat. ‘I made some of my best friends that way … Fran … Laura …’
I nodded. I didn’t have the heart.
‘I found you through it,’ she said, and she grasped for my hand. ‘I get it,’ I said, moving it away. ‘I get all that.’
She looked up, hopeful.
‘But why do you take it to such extremes?’
‘What do you mean?’ she said, tears in her eyes, mopping one away with the end of her jumper, this girl I’d loved, so vulnerable now, so fragile in my hands.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘A pop star.’
‘You mean—’
‘A pop star, Hayley,’ I said, gently. ‘That’s the really sad thing.’
She sniffed, wiped another eye. I felt the urge to do it for her, but some part of me that felt stronger now resisted. Maybe just to show her.
But ‘I don’t understand?’ she said, and though I should have been angry with her for continuing to play this game, I couldn’t be too harsh, I couldn’t destroy her.
‘Aphra,’ I said, just to show I knew. ‘You followed Aphra to Paris.’
She sniffed again, and looked up at me with those great big eyes, ready for redemption.
‘Tom,’ she said quietly, that Princess Diana look making its comeback now: ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
She denied it. Denied, denied, denied. Did admit one thing, though.
‘Cockroft …’ – an apologetic smile; the first sign of any remorse – ‘well, he taught that when we have to deal with something painful, it’s okay not to know what to say,’ she said. ‘He said there are techniques you can use until you’re strong enough to handle it yourself.’
‘Like?’
‘Like “externalising your feelings using pre-established thoughts”.’
I shook my head. No idea.
‘If someone else has said it better, say it the way they said it.’
‘Copy them?’
‘A line from a film, a poem, whatever.’
‘Plagiarism.’
‘Using what’s around you.’
‘So your postcard—’
‘Used song lyrics. It was at number one. The words just fit. I could say what I wanted to say without having to worry about how to say it. It was on the radio all the time, like a sign.’
‘But what about Paris?’ I said.
‘I wasn’t in Paris,’ she said, dismissively. ‘I just went to Paris.’
‘You just went to Paris. That’s the same as being in Paris.’
‘I went to Paris for a little while, cleared my head, then I came home and stayed at, you know, with people.’
‘What people? You’ve been here the whole time? What people?’
Say Laura. Say Fran. Then I’d catch you out.
‘Annie,’ she said. Her sister. I knew she knew. ‘You need to give me some space. You need to trust me again.’
I wanted to scream, but our negotiations had become delicate. If I pushed the jealous boyfriend angle that’s all we’d talk about. And besides, another thought had come to me.
‘Did you listen to the show?’ I said.
I don’t know why it was important. Maybe if I knew she’d listened, I’d know she wanted to hear my voice, to hear how I was, and maybe it’d be like we were still connected somehow.
‘No,’ she said. ‘That would have defeated the object. My plan was to detach for a while. That’s what they call it when you see it through – detachment. You detach from your old life to find how to make it new. You work out what’s important.’
‘And did you find it?’
She welled up as she looked at me, reached out for my hand, and said, ‘Yes, Tom, I think so.’
I thought about what else to ask her, but her eyes flitted up to the clock in the corner of the room, and she said ‘Do you mind if we knock it off for tonight? I’m just so, so tired …’
I had a thousand more questions.
‘I love you, Tom,’ she said, and my eyes pricked with tears, because despite it all that’s what I’d wanted to hear, but to avoid her eye I looked around the room, then up at the clock myself for the first time.
Uh oh.
[8]
Cockroft nurses his drink back at Keen’s.
For the first time, he has ordered his own drink, an Old Crow, ignoring my Bud.
‘The man I saw,’ he says, bourbon swirling, catching the light. ‘He was at a wonderful point in his life. He was making decisions that I hadn’t made. Being the husband and father I hadn’t been.’
‘And you wanted to – what did you say? – “piggyback his joy”?’
‘That makes it sound childish, but yes,’ he says. ‘And then, when I became strong enough, it became important to me that our friendship was real. I was, I like to think, like an older brother to him. A father, maybe. A mentor? I don’t know. But I wanted it to be built on something real.’
‘So you told him?’
‘So I told him. I told him our meeting was not chance,’ he said. ‘That I had spent six months studying him from a distance. That I had engineered our friendship based on his choices.’
‘You don’t mention his name in your book.’
‘His name does not matter. His name is not who he is. It was not his choice. It was someone else�
��s.’
‘I’d like to know.’
‘His name was Andreas,’ he says.
He takes a hit of his drink and then shifts in his chair as a new thought comes to him. It is like he is a surfer who has seen a new wave which will take him far away from this.
‘To meet your follower can cause distress. But the world it opens up is too great to ignore. To be effective, it must be quiet, covert, hidden.’
He is passionate now; almost preaching.
‘You defend it despite everything.’
‘It has the potential to radically improve—’
‘What happened?’ I say, interrupting. ‘With Andreas?’
‘What is there to say?’ he says, and he seems almost physically to deflate. ‘I came clean, in 1971, in a bar on Friedrichstraße.’
‘And what happened?’
‘He detached.’
twenty-four
‘It’s 8.01 on July 19th, I’m Tom Adoyo with the stories you’re waking up to …’
I had a feeling this was going to be difficult. Not because I’d barely slept an hour. But because of what had made the news.
I dreaded getting there. Slowed my stories right down. Threw to Cathy James reporting live on a pile-up on the M25 and just let her talk, and when she finished, asked her about it some more. I told myself I was just making the most of a rare outside broadcast. You had to do that with OBs. Even ones just on the phone. Faux-B’s.
‘… and finally …’
Well, I’d put it off as long as I could. The release had only come in on the wires in the last forty minutes. I’d kept it out of the 7.30, because that’s when our audience is at its peak. I kept it for the 8, because that’s when people are brushing their teeth. They’ve done research.
‘… some breaking news this morning …’
Brace yourself, Tom. Keep brushing, everyone. Drown this out …
‘… a spokesman for London Zoo revealed in an early-morning statement … that one of their marmosets is missing.’
Just. Act. Normal.
I looked up. Behind the glass, eight complete strangers were staring at me.
‘The … six-inch primate was last seen yesterday evening …’
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