by Unknown
‘That was amazing,’ Joakim stammered. His cheeks had flushed.
‘You did it,’ said Hayden, handing him back the fiddle. ‘You just need to let go.’
Amos was smiling as well. But not with his eyes.
After
We drove to Stansted in silence. It was three in the morning and the roads were practically deserted. Each time there were headlights in my rear-view mirror my mouth dried and my heart raced at the thought that it might be the police. This was what it must be like to be a criminal, I thought. But, of course, I was a criminal now. During the last few hours I had crossed a line into a different world.
At one point, Sonia ordered me to stop in front of a row of terraced houses. She got out of the car and dropped the plastic bag full of everything I’d collected in the flat into a dustbin that was standing on the pavement. She pushed it deep inside and wiped her hands on her trousers before climbing back into the car. I drove on. Later, we stopped at another bin and got rid of the rug.
‘Stop,’ said Sonia suddenly, as we reached the signs to the long-stay car park. I pulled over.
‘What is it?’
‘There are cameras at the barrier. When you take your ticket to get in, you’re staring into one.’
‘Then we can’t go there.’
‘Yes, we can.’ She opened the glove compartment and fished out a pair of sunglasses. ‘Put them on.’
‘But –’
‘Now your scarf. Tie it over your head. Oh, let me.’ She wrapped it tightly around and nearly throttled me with the knot. ‘Nobody would recognize you now.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’ll lie on the floor. Let’s go.’
She lay down in the back of the car and I drove into the car park. I took the ticket, the barrier rose and signs directed us to Zone G.
‘Hang on!’ Sonia said, from the floor. ‘Wait!’
‘What?’
‘Pull over. This is stupid. It’s not just at the entrance there are cameras – they’re everywhere. We haven’t thought this through properly. I must have been mad.’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘On the train, as well. We can’t get the train back into London. We should never have come here.’
‘But we have. Do you want me to turn round and leave?’
‘I don’t know.’ For the first time she seemed confused. ‘What do you think?’
‘What do I think?’
‘Yes. Come on.’
‘Where are there cameras?’
‘Everywhere! On the shuttle – aren’t there? I can’t remember, but I bet there are. And in the airport. And in the station. And on the train. Everywhere we go, there’ll be photographs of us.’
‘Oh,’ I said. My brain was working very slowly. I squeezed the steering-wheel and stared at the rows upon rows of gleaming empty cars stretching in all directions. ‘So, how about if you get out here and go on alone? And I’ll leave the car in Zone G and then –’ I stopped.
‘Yes?’ Sonia hissed from the floor. ‘Then what?’
‘Then we can meet up at the taxi rank.’
‘Taxi?’
‘If I, in my sunglasses and scarf, leave the car here, and you get on the shuttle first and wait at the rank, I’ll follow a little later and we can catch a cab together. That way, nobody can connect us to the car.’
There was a silence.
‘Sonia?’
‘I’m thinking.’
‘We can’t go on sitting here.’
‘So we go separately and meet up again?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right.’
‘I’ll wait at the rank outside the airport.’
‘OK.’
‘Hang on – I haven’t got any money.’
‘We’ll have to get the driver to drop me off at the flat so that I can pick up my card and he can drive us to a cashpoint to get the money.’
‘Right.’
‘If I’ve got enough in my account to cover it.’
‘What if you haven’t?’
‘I’m sure I have,’ I said, without conviction.
As soon as we arrived at Zone G, Sonia climbed over to the passenger seat, opened the door and slid out. I saw her in my mirror walking rapidly away towards the shuttle stop. The car park was full and I had to drive up and down the rows before I found a gap. It felt very strange to be doing this alone. My body felt boneless and alien; my heart felt huge and pulpy. My breath was coming in short gasps. I reversed and then I started to tremble so much that I had to stop and make myself breathe slowly. What if I bumped into another car, set off an alarm?
Very slowly, I reversed into the space, pulled on the handbrake, switched off the headlights, turned the key, got out. It was nearly dawn. There was a stripe of paler sky on the horizon and the shapes of trees were beginning to emerge. I shivered, suddenly cold. I pulled off the sunglasses and left them on the passenger seat; took the scarf off my head and wound it around my neck, over the bruise, instead. I sat in the car and waited for the first shuttle bus to arrive and leave, taking Sonia away. Not until another car had arrived did I get out and walk over to the stop.
I got onto the bus at the far end, away from the driver, so that he wouldn’t get a good look at me. At first it was just me and a middle-aged man in a suit, puffy-faced with tiredness. Then, a few minutes later, the bus stopped and we were joined by a family of five, towing enormous suitcases on wheels and squabbling. I was very conscious that I didn’t look like someone about to go on holiday or to a business meeting. I had no luggage; I was wearing light clothes and didn’t even have a jacket. Surely I stood out, looked outrageously suspicious. I stuck my hands into my pockets, stared straight ahead, tried to appear nonchalant. I wished my hair wasn’t so short and spiky; I wished I’d taken the stud out of my nose and wasn’t wearing ripped jeans that were sodden around the hem and a damp T-shirt.
When we arrived at the terminal, I let everyone out of the bus before me. I was overwhelmingly tired and, as I stepped into the jostling crowds, felt as though I was under water. Everything was happening to someone else, someone who wasn’t me, who hadn’t done the things I had just done.
I waited for a couple of minutes, then went to join the queue for taxis. There weren’t many people in it yet – night flights were only just now arriving – and Sonia was the third in line. I went and stood beside her and she gave me a brief nod.
‘The centre of London,’ I said to the driver, when we climbed into the cab. I gave him Sonia’s address.
‘We can drop you off and then go to mine.’ I leaned forward and said, through the partition: ‘Is it all right if, when we get to my flat, you wait for me while I run and get my card, and then we go together while I get money out?’
He gave a shrug. ‘As long as I get the money,’ he replied.
‘I know,’ I said. I was looking at the meter that clicked forward every few seconds. I already owed him £5.60 and we hadn’t left the airport.
‘How come you’ve gone on holiday without your card?’
‘We weren’t on holiday,’ I said. ‘We were meeting someone.’
I wanted to be as vague as possible. And uninteresting. I didn’t want him to remember us. I sat back in my seat. Sonia had her hands clasped in her lap and her eyes were closed, but I could tell she wasn’t asleep. I opened my mouth to say something to her, but closed it again. After all, what was there to say? The night was behind us now. I closed my eyes too, and let the journey jolt through me. When I opened them again, we were turning into Sonia’s road.
Forty-five minutes later, I had paid the driver a hundred pounds and was in my nasty little flat, gritty with tiredness, buzzing with anxiety.
Before
We clinked glasses. Neal’s arm was almost touching mine on the table, and I could feel his warmth beside me. If I put my hand behind his head, fingers tangling in his dark curls, pulled him towards me and kissed him, I knew he would kiss me back. He would look at me with his crinkle
-eyed smile, say my name as if he was learning it. Maybe we would go into the bedroom and he would unzip my very short green dress (three pounds from the local Oxfam shop) and lift it over my head, and we would be late for the rehearsal and everybody would guess, and Neal would be embarrassed but he would be happy, very happy. I knew that. A little shiver of apprehension went through me.
‘Cheers,’ I said.
‘Cheers.’ He didn’t smile but shifted imperceptibly in his seat so that our arms touched. For a second everything hung in the balance, but then my mobile rang and it was Sally, sounding busy and excited and also rather bossy, asking me to buy some lemonade on the way over because she had decided to make us some Pimm’s, just weak ones. It was such a lovely summer evening and Lola was at her mother’s for once so she needed to celebrate.
‘We should go,’ I said to Neal, and held out my hand to pull him to his feet. We stood for a moment, hand in hand, smiling at each other. Then he lifted my hand to his lips and kissed the back, and when he let it go I touched his face very gently with the tips of my fingers. We could wait. I had all summer before me.
Walking towards Sally’s house, he said: ‘For a long while there was someone else.’
‘Yes?’
‘We lived together for almost three years.’ He wasn’t looking at me but straight ahead.
‘In your house?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought it looked as if a woman had lived there.’
‘She was good at things like that.’
‘So what happened?’ I knew that this was a form of confession, something he needed to tell me before we went any further. I felt a twinge of apprehension at his solemnity. ‘Why did it end?’
‘She died.’
‘Oh!’ This was so utterly unexpected – not a story of another messy break-up but something altogether more heartbreaking – that for a moment I was quite lost for words. ‘God, Neal,’ I managed. ‘I’m incredibly sorry. How? Had she been ill?’
‘A head-on collision.’
‘That’s – that’s awful. When did it happen?’
‘Two years ago. More. It was in February, icy roads. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.’
‘What a sad thing,’ I said. I didn’t know what words to use. I wondered if I should stop and hug him or something, but he kept on walking, eyes ahead.
‘It’s all right now,’ he said, adding: ‘There hasn’t been anyone since.’ He gave an odd laugh. ‘I didn’t know how.’
‘I see.’ And I did see. It was as if I was stepping into the shoes of a dead woman. This wasn’t going to be just a carefree summer affair with Neal but an undertaking. As we walked, I felt a heaviness settle on me, like a warning.
Perhaps the Pimm’s hadn’t been such a good idea after all. It certainly wasn’t weak. Hayden drank a large amount, which seemed to have no effect on him, but he also kept topping up Joakim’s glass, which Joakim gulped eagerly while Guy glared at him. Richard came home from work to find six strangers (and me) making a horrible noise in the living room, which, although quite big, was certainly not large enough for an oversized bluegrass band. Sally was lying flung out on the sofa, her cheeks flushed.
‘What’s happening?’ he hissed angrily to her.
She giggled and rolled her eyes at me.
‘Is there anything to eat?’ Richard asked her.
‘Why don’t you go and have a look?’
‘We’re going,’ I said to Richard. ‘Sorry. We should have left before now. It didn’t go very well.’
‘It wasn’t so bad,’ said Amos, a bit aggressively, I thought.
‘It wasn’t so good,’ said Hayden, as Richard left the room and started banging pots and pans in the kitchen. He was sitting on the floor with his knees up and had hardly touched his guitar all evening. He looked tired, maybe a bit downcast.
‘At least some of us make an effort.’
‘You should try and keep to the rhythm,’ said Hayden, in a kindly tone. ‘Joakim’s got the right idea. See if you can copy him a bit more.’
Amos’s entire body tensed. Sonia stepped forward and laid a hand on his arm. ‘I thought you did fine,’ she said softly.
‘It was OK for a first attempt,’ said Neal. He was standing at my side. My fingers brushed his.
Hayden shrugged. ‘Yeah, well, you’re not really in the band to make music, are you? We’re not all blind.’
‘Hayden,’ said Sally, from the sofa, ‘shut up and have another drink.’
‘Sometimes drink doesn’t make you drunk,’ he said. ‘I think I should go.’
There was a small silence after he’d left. Amos looked at me. ‘Are you going to tell him, or shall I?’
‘Tell him what?’
‘That he’s out of the band.’
‘Come on, Amos. He’s the best player we’ve got!’
‘And he knows it,’ said Sonia. ‘Maybe he’s too good for us.’
‘How can you be too good?’ Sally sat up rather unsteadily on the sofa. Her hair was mussed.
I couldn’t quite believe that she was getting involved in a discussion of who did and didn’t belong in our band. I wanted to tell her to shut up but that wouldn’t have been right in her house. ‘We’re lucky to have him,’ I said. ‘The group feels different when he’s in it.’
‘He’s great.’ Joakim’s voice was impassioned and slightly slurred from the Pimm’s. ‘He can really play. If he leaves so do we – right, Dad?’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Guy.
I could see that an argument was about to start. I held up my hands. ‘I’ll go round and talk to him. I don’t think he quite knows the effect he has on people.’
‘He knows,’ said Amos. ‘He’s got it in for me. It makes me play badly as well. My fingers turn to thumbs when I feel him staring at me. And he does it deliberately.’
‘Bonnie’s right,’ said Neal. ‘He just says whatever comes into his mind.’
‘Like a child,’ said Sonia, a bit contemptuously.
I pulled on my jacket and picked up my banjo. I’d had enough of this. ‘I’ll explain things to him. Maybe he’ll just solve the problem by leaving.’
I cast a glance back at them all as I went: Neal looking rueful, Amos smouldering and Sonia having her usual calming effect on him, Joakim red with angry excitement, Guy austere and Sally very definitely drunk. It was a relief to get out of there.
After
It was nearly seven in the morning. The sky was a pale turquoise, with just a few thin streaks of cloud on the horizon. It was Saturday, 22 August. In a few hours I was supposed to be at a rehearsal. I stood in the kitchen and closed my eyes. Don’t think, don’t feel, don’t remember. I drank a glass of cold water, then another. The pain in my ribs and the pain in my neck seemed to be connected and my whole body throbbed. The keys to the car and the flat lay on the kitchen slab and I stared at them for a moment. What should I do with them? With thick fingers, I separated them, put the flat key on my own ring and held the car key in my fingers, twiddling it. I opened the lid of the swing bin, then changed my mind. In one of the mugs? No, anyone might find it there. In the bread bin, the teapot, the empty biscuit tin, the porcelain jug I used for flowers, the drawer stuffed full of old brochures? In the end, I pushed it deep into the sugar jar. I went into the bathroom, where the tiles I’d prised off lay in a heap by the bath, and peeled off my clothes. I would have peeled off my skin as well, if I could have. I had a shower that started off scalding but gradually ran tepid, and scrubbed myself all over, though I avoided my neck. I washed my hair twice. When I rubbed the fogged-up mirror I saw that my bruise was spreading, like a stain.
I realized I was hollow with hunger, but the thought of anything to eat made me want to gag, so I climbed onto my bed, still wrapped in my towel. The strips of wallpaper that were hanging off the wall looked like skin. I pulled the duvet over my head so I wouldn’t have to see them. Images flickered past me and I couldn’t stop them. His eyes, his mouth, his hand reaching out towards me
, his body splayed in the boat like a beached fish, his dead, unblinking eyes and his body sinking under the surface of the water. The phone rang and I heard a voice leaving a message. Sally. I had to ring her as soon as possible. Then my mother. Then Sonia. My mobile buzzed. I heard the ping of texts arriving. Hours passed. Perhaps I slept. Perhaps I dreamed that none of it had happened, but then I woke and knew all over again that it was true.
Before
He just held open the door. He didn’t seem at all surprised to see me. I stepped over a pile of unopened letters and into a small hot kitchen-cum-living room that was strewn with clothes, books, sheet music, empty bottles, tipped-up mugs. On the small table there was a pan of burned rice. He picked it up as if he didn’t know what it was or how it had got there. ‘Don’t worry about the mess,’ Hayden said, putting the pan on a chair.
‘I wasn’t. How long have you been here?’
‘Just a week or so. It belongs to a friend. Or, at least, a friend’s renting it, I think. I’m looking for something more permanent. Beer?’
‘All right.’
He pulled the tab off a can and waited until the spume had sunk back into its hole before handing it over. I took a gulp. I already felt slightly muzzy from the wine I’d had with Neal, then Sally’s Pimm’s. Hayden, on the other hand, appeared stone-cold sober although I’d seen how much he had drunk. He took a can for himself, then settled into a sagging armchair and pulled off his shoes and socks, wriggling his toes luxuriously.
‘That’s better.’ He tipped the can back and I watched him. ‘I could make us something to eat,’ he said. ‘Or you could, which might be better. A fry-up, if Leo’s left stuff in the fridge.’
‘I don’t cook,’ I said, and perched myself on the sofa opposite him.
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘Why?’
‘Do you cook?’
‘Not much.’