Dear Amy

by Helen Callaghan

  I walked on, not varying my pace, and not looking back, trying to give no sign that I perceived that anything unusual was happening.

  I checked out the houses as I went, calculating which door to bang on if this strange man should get out of his car and come after me. I listened for his engine to rev up, or his door to open. I heard nothing, the nothing you hear when you are convinced someone is watching your back.

  I’d reached my own house. My keys were already balled in my fist, sticking out from between my fingers, more vicious than knuckledusters when used correctly. I preferred not to speculate as to whether this creature knew I was in the house alone. I jammed the front door key into the lock, twisting it so hard that for a horrid moment I thought it would snap. Then the door opened, letting me into light and relative safety. As I turned to shut it behind me, I risked a look up the street. He was still there, unmoving; simply waiting.

  I don’t think he realized that I’d recognized him, or even noticed him. I put the milk down near the kettle and tried to sort myself out. I was breathing hard, and my heart beat a skipping tattoo beneath my jacket. I felt light and panicky.

  I ran upstairs to our, or rather my, bedroom, which overlooks the street. I didn’t turn the switch, but instead crept forward to the window. Fractionally, I pushed aside a tiny fold in the curtain and peeped out.

  I could just about see him, at the very edge of the perspective the window gave me. He was still in the dark Megane, though it looked brown in the sodium light. Other parked cars near him hid his registration plate from me. He was still waiting.

  I don’t know how long I watched him watching my house, as my breath condensed slightly on the cold glass and my legs started to cramp. Then, with appalling suddenness, the engine started with a faint roar and the headlights came on, dazzling me.

  I held my breath.

  He shot away from the kerb with a growl, and headed off, at speed, past my house and off to the main road. He was gone.

  I breathed again. The street was blameless and empty once more. I waited and waited, but he did not return. Eventually, I got up and went downstairs to make a cup of tea and phone Lily.

  ‘Following you, you say,’ said Lily, leaning back on her shabby couch, pausing to yank a small green stuffed dinosaur out from behind her back before settling in. There were tired lines around her eyes, and I realized guiltily that it was late, and she had a sick toddler to look after and school in the morning. ‘Are you sure?’

  Lily has three small children that she has pretty much raised alone, with occasional input from her harried, perpetually gloomy mother. She specializes in short, passionate, fraught relationships with desperately unsuitable men. The last one was a married master at one of the colleges who was on the brink of resigning over her, and the one before that had to leave the country after he was caught trying to sell cocaine to the bevy of privately educated female undergrads he was coaching in tae kwon do. Perhaps, all things considered, there’s a good reason that Lily’s mother looks old before her time. If the single life is an urban jungle, Lily hacks through it with a giant machete, and engages romantically only with hungry jaguars and cannibal tribesmen.

  I moved my hands through my hair and sighed. ‘It was the same guy that was at the school today. I’m positive. And I think he was probably the same guy who phoned the school looking for me, but I’m not sure about that.’

  ‘Whoever phoned probably had nothing to do with it,’ she replied with a flick of her ochre-painted nails. ‘Did this guy in the car follow you all the way home from school?’

  ‘I didn’t go straight home. I went up to the paper first. Then Waitrose.’ I was exhausted.

  ‘But did he follow you there?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ I burst out in frustration. ‘I don’t keep a constant lookout for sinister types spying on me!’

  Lily frowned at me.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Lils,’ I said, mortified. ‘I’m bang out of line, I know. I’m very tired and maybe I’m imagining the whole thing.’

  She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. ‘Maybe. But you know, perhaps you want to be careful. People see you on TV, and . . .’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  She opened her mouth, as though about to say something, then shut it again. ‘Did you see his face?’ she asked.

  ‘I did the first time. It was too dark the second. But it was definitely him.’ I shrugged helplessly. ‘And there’s something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said, ‘but I’m starting to wonder whether I’ve met Bethan Avery before.’

  She did not reply, merely stared at me.

  I found this unaccountably difficult to discuss. I do not enjoy talking about my past, even to Lily, who doesn’t know the full extent of it.

  ‘It’s just . . . I met, well, I met a lot of very, very damaged people in those years with the nuns,’ I say. ‘And now I’m starting to wonder whether she was one of them.’

  ‘Have you told this to the police? Or that friend of yours, the criminologist?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not yet. I mean, I can’t . . . What would I say? I have no memory of ever meeting her.’

  Lily frowned, her jaw jutting slightly. ‘It doesn’t change the fact that this is a man following you, not a woman. You know, I think,’ said Lily, about to pronounce her final word on the subject, ‘that you should phone the police if you see this creep again. Get them to come over and ask him what the hell he thinks he’s doing.’

  The drive home passed in a strange kind of dream. I reflected not on the man, but instead on the hostel and the girls I had met there, trying to recall any nugget of information that would help.

  But mostly I thought about Angelique, the Queen of the Night.

  I was sitting in a church the second time I met her.

  I had wandered into the church after being shooed away from a library, and then the blissfully warm lobby of a department store. I was huddled in a pew at the back, contemplating the stained-glass window behind the altar.

  I still had four hours to kill.

  St Felicity’s had strict requirements for those receiving its largesse. First and foremost, if you weren’t back by nine at night, you lost your bed. No ifs or buts.

  Furthermore, no single women were allowed to stay in the hostel between eight in the morning and six at night, while the nuns and volunteers scrubbed the cheap linoleum in the rooms and boiled the sheets in their constant and bitterly fought rearguard action against lice and bedbugs.

  As a consequence all I remember of that first week, before the nuns took me in semi-permanently, was a cold, dreary nomadism where I shifted from place to place, looking to wear out the hours until I could return – eat, wash, go to bed, get up, eat, leave, and do it all over again.

  Now I was in one of those tiny dark churches London is littered with – medieval boltholes overshadowed on all sides by high industrial buildings. This one was dedicated to St Eugenia who, from what I could see, had been some sort of martyr, and perhaps cross-dresser, who had disguised herself as a man if I understood the mosaics correctly.

  I’ve never been a particularly religious person, though I have my beliefs. But I was drawn to the church’s shelter and peace, harbouring me against the bitter wind outside. Above my head, someone was practising on the wheezy old organ – some elaborate classical piece – and a trailing fugue of falling notes came from above.

  I was thinking about nothing, my habit during such hours, when I was startled by somebody throwing themselves into the pew next to me with such force that the wood creaked and I nearly leapt straight up in the air.

  It was my neighbour from the upper bunk, grinning at me, her dark eyes gleaming in the dusty candlelit space. One of the teeth next to her right canine was missing, a spot of blackness in her face.

  ‘Well, hello there!’ she said, her voice and laughter shattering the calm, clearly very amused by my shock and surprise.

  ‘Are you mental?’ I snarled, st
ill light-headed and shaking. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack!’

  ‘Sorry. Sorry. But it was funny. You should have seen your face.’ She offered me a pleased smile, as though contemplating a job well done. She had a strangely refined accent, at complete odds with her appearance. I wondered if it was real, or if she was making fun of me.

  I crossed my arms over my chest again. ‘What are you doing in here?’

  ‘Avoiding people.’ She gave me a cool look. ‘Like you, probably. Are you going to steal that?’

  ‘What? What are you on about?’

  She nodded over to a battered collection box, attached to the centre of a wrought-iron stand containing rows of shelves filled with sand and tea lights.

  ‘Am I what?’ I asked in horror. ‘God no. I was just looking at the stained glass . . .’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m sure you were.’ She got up, those long legs unwinding endlessly as she did so, and strolled over to the candles. She did not even look round to see if the coast was clear. She tugged at the battered iron corner of the box, which rattled but didn’t move. ‘Bugger.’

  ‘Stop that!’ I hissed at her, appalled, but also secretly thrilled at her heretical daring. ‘There’s somebody up there!’

  ‘Who’s that, God?’

  ‘No, whoever’s playing the organ, you muppet!’

  ‘That’s a tape recording . . .’ She flapped a dismissive hand at me, inspecting the fixture holding the box.

  ‘It bloody isn’t! They’ve stopped in the middle and restarted at least two times.’

  She shrugged and retreated back to the pew after a few seconds. ‘It’s bolted on anyway,’ she said, as though to make it absolutely clear that she had not desisted because I had commanded her to, and that she feared neither God nor the organist.

  She was silent for a few seconds, giving me the opportunity to study her out of the corner of my eye while the music continued above.

  In profile she had fine features, big black eyes, a petite nose dusted with freckles, and plump, sensuous lips. She could have been beautiful, in fact, but the most obvious thing about her was her state of deep disrepair. Her peroxide-blonde hair was dyed to the point of colourlessness. Angry red spots dotted her brow and cold sores bracketed her mouth. Her lips were slightly feathery with peeling skin, and she was pale, too pale, almost a sallow green.

  Her arms, bare from the elbows, were dusted with little blue fingertip bruises, and in the crook of the right nestled an ugly mass of red and purple, pocked with little black marks.

  ‘If you’re cold you should go to the Southbank Centre,’ she said suddenly.

  I threw her a surprised glance.

  ‘They keep it heated all day. And they can’t throw you out unless they catch you up to no good, like begging.’ She gestured expansively, not looking at me, as though demonstrating that it cost her absolutely nothing to tell me this. ‘It’s, like, one of those public space things.’

  I considered this for a long moment. ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  She was still looking away, but she nodded, once.

  ‘What happened to your face?’ she asked.

  I froze.

  I was aware of the effect I had on people at present, and suspected it was why I had been moved on from the library and the department store. My face, and the reason I was homeless, had a very close correlation.

  ‘I tripped,’ I replied stonily.

  She glanced back at me then, no doubt taking in my two black eyes and swollen, broken nose.

  ‘Yeah. You “tripped”.’ She snickered. ‘Of course you did.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  She seemed to be thinking, her finger now at the corner of her mouth as she worried at the nail and its cracked casing of peach-coloured varnish.

  Or perhaps, looking back on it, she was merely nervous.

  ‘Do you want to come to a party?’

  ‘A party? What, now?’

  ‘Well it will have to be now because we have to be back at Flicks for nine or we’ll lose our beds.’ She didn’t wait for my answer, rolling once more to her feet, her sleeve falling to hide her wounded arm. Her back was straight, tense, and I realized that despite her affected accent, dramatic mannerisms and recklessness, that this was because she feared my refusal, my rejection. ‘Come on, if you’re coming.’

  I couldn’t tell you how my relationship with her developed, how I got her name out of her, even whether we were friends or merely acquaintances forming our own pack for survival. I knew her name at this point – Angelique, which she pronounced carefully, lingering over each syllable as though it were music, which made me think it was not her real name at all – and before long we were staying out later and later each night before returning to the hostel. She was universally admired and introduced me to her friends – a grimy circle of skinny people I did not particularly like and who didn’t like me, though that might have been to do with the taciturn way I refused to answer any of their questions. They offered me draws on spliffs while Angelique vanished into the back rooms of their filthy squats with them before returning, her eyes dull, her limbs languorous. Before long she stopped hiding what she was doing and started shooting up in front of me.

  I can’t remember when I started to join her in this. I just know that I did.

  15

  It was Tuesday night, and the reconstruction – ten minutes’ worth of vague acting and the appeal from me – had aired. I could barely watch it, caught between the twin poles of dread and exposure. Lily had wanted me to come round, for us to watch it with her mother; I had gently declined.

  There had been no further communications from Bethan Avery in the meantime. Or Messrs Calwhit, Blank, Mettle. Or Eddy. Or Martin.

  This last, funnily enough, seemed to rankle most of all. I fought the absurd feeling that I was being discarded for being insufficiently attractive to traumatized kidnap victims.

  Yeah, that’s right, Margot – it’s all about you, I thought ruefully. Pull yourself together. It’s only been a day or two.

  I sat down on the couch, in front of the grey and silent television, and looked at the clock on the cable box. It was six, and it was dark outside, dark early today in these days of early darkness, because of the fog. I don’t like fog. Apart from being inconvenient and dangerous, I dislike it on principle. Walking through it, there is the sensation of veils lifting and falling behind you, white gauzy veils, but there is no final one that is lifted, leaving what you are really looking for completely exposed.

  Perhaps this is why I objected to the fog more today than I would on other days.

  I stared at the blank television and kidded myself that I was thinking.

  I kicked my shoes off and pulled my legs up under me on the sofa. I had a bag full of essays and a couple of letters for the column to answer, so I thought about them for a few minutes, without getting up. I couldn’t just sit here and helplessly watch the work pile up.

  After all, I’m not helpless.

  ‘I’m not helpless,’ I said aloud.

  The silence in the house mocked me.

  I had never felt so worthless.

  I had received a commission, an imperative, a cry for help . . . and I’d got nowhere. I’d learned that the plea was genuine, shortly before it had been smothered by my own bull-headed carelessness, insensitivity and stupidity. I hadn’t found out anything at all about where Bethan was now, or come any closer to learning about her state of mind. The void that Bethan had vanished into was still a void, issuing nothing but a trio of backward-looking letters. I could not shake the feeling that I’d failed somehow – the sensation one must have when one runs to a panicked shout heard in a wilderness, only to find a bloody garment nosed by wild animals, or a piece of rope hanging over the edge of a precipice, the frayed end wafting in a mountain breeze.

  I tried to tell myself that the reconstruction had literally only just aired, but my spirits would not lift.

  She was still with me; she was almost tangible. But I knew, in
my heart of hearts, she would offer no more material help. The distance between herself and me bristled with tension, and her badly contained panic as she waited for her rescue; waited for the eyes hunting through the darkness to light on her, for the first and last time.

  I walked into the kitchen, and switched on the light. The kettle rested on the counter, empty, and I picked it up, pulling out the plug. I took it over to the sink, placing the red and chrome spout under the tap. Before me was the kitchen window, looking into my back garden. I peered through it, swiping at the condensation on the cold glass.

  There was nothing out of the ordinary, just the night and the fog.

  What had I expected?

  Disquieted, I turned off the tap.

  The house phone rang – a sudden shrill squawk of electronic noise. Shocked, I dropped the kettle, which crashed into the stainless steel sink, water gushing everywhere. I swore and lifted it out, sure it had scratched the metal. Wiping my wet hands on my trousers, I hurried out to answer the phone.

  I moved into the dark hall and swiped up the handset.

  ‘Hello?’

  There was no reply, just a dense electronic silence.

  ‘Hello, can I help you?’

  Nothing. But not quite nothing – there was breathing; not heavy, but light, silent, controlled. Expectant.

  ‘Who is this?’ I asked, though I knew by then they would not reply.

  The click and purr of the receiver being replaced was my only answer. When I hit 1471 on the keypad, I was told that the caller had withheld their number.

  The next morning, I was walking through St Andrews churchyard after my run, on my cool-down, and the bells were ringing. Today I felt a fierce, sharp optimism.

  Watery daylight touched the shrivelled grass, the sky was pearly grey and thick as cream. Nearby, an old couple, smothered and muffled in heavy winter clothes, negotiated the broken and buried graves. The woman held a stiff brush of sturdy flowers, a no-nonsense winter bouquet. They were making their way to the newer part of the graveyard.