Back at my desk I saw a sticky memo on my monitor. 10.30 Rupert??? Will ring back.
Christine gave me a minute to take it in, then, ‘So, spill, who is he?’ She took a nail file out of her desk and rasped away at her thumbnail, a tiny sound that put my teeth on edge.
‘No one.’
I trawled through my emails. When the phone rang I answered calmly, the standard greeting, and it was only a customer with a simple enquiry. But the next caller was Rupert. Christine had gone to get the coffee so I was able to give it to him straight.
‘Listen. I’m sorry and all that. But there’s no way—’
‘No?’
‘Thanks for the bear but please don’t ring again.’
‘Meet me at lunchtime,’ he said.
‘What are you doing in Sheffield?’
‘Business.’
‘What about your wife?’
There was a silence.
‘I can’t meet you.’
Christine came back carrying two mugs, a packet of Garibaldis jammed under her arm. ‘The park gates near your work, one o’clock,’ he said.
‘How do you know—’ I started, but the phone went dead. I opened my drawer and looked at the photo of Charlie. I keep it in my desk because Charlie is my business and no one else’s − though Christine knows his name. I took the photo in Blackpool the day we met. Funny, I’ve only been to Blackpool twice and both times I’ve met a man.
I signed my flexi-time form at twelve-fifty and left the building. The park was ten minutes away and Rupert was already waiting by the gates when I arrived. I’d forgotten how tall he was and the bright brown of his eyes. He held out a paper carrier bag.
‘Sandwiches,’ he said, ‘and a drink.’
We walked in silence past the swinging kids, past the café with its man-sized ice-cream sign, and stopped at the duck pond.
He nodded at a seat in a puddle of sunshine. ‘Shall we?’ he said. Ducks, spotting the paper bag, surged towards us quacking. There were ducklings and a moorhen chick like a ball of dust flitting on the surface of the water. All those ducks and coots and moorhens with the hearts beating inside them, intestines coiled and packed, little sets of livers, kidneys, lungs.
I looked at the ground and noticed Rupert’s boots, conker brown, gleaming. His trousers were soft pale corduroy and his jacket buttery leather. It struck me that everything he was wearing, and that I’d ever seen him wearing, was brand new.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.
‘I said. Business.’
‘How did you get my number?’
‘Child’s play.’ He smiled sideways at me, the tip of his tongue resting on the centre of his upper lip. There was a flip in my chest like a fish jumping and I looked away quick. He opened the bag and took out two wax-paper wrapped sandwiches. I recognised the wrappings from the expensive place that did brie and grape rather than cheese and pickle, but I wasn’t interested in sandwich fillings.
‘I’m not hungry,’ I said. ‘Look, this can’t happen.’
‘Drink then.’ He took two small bottles of champagne from his bag – Dom Perignon – and before I could object he popped the corks. He stuck straws in the necks and handed me one. I almost laughed. If there ever was a champagne moment this was not it. But I was thirsty. A woman with wild pink dreadlocks walked past, saw the bottles and grinned. I waited till she’d gone and took one.
‘OK then,’ I said. ‘Since you’ve gone and got it. But I haven’t got long.’
‘Bacon and avocado or mozzarella, rocket and roasted tomato?’ he said. I noticed the length of his lashes, a pinprick mole at the corner of his eye. ‘Or shall I throw it all to the ducks?’
My stomach growled. I could faintly smell the bacon through its waxy wrapper. I sucked a strawful of fizzy champagne.
‘I’ll have the bacon one,’ I said. It seemed stupid to go hungry. The bread was thick-cut, soft, speckled with walnuts. I tore off a crust and a chunk of avocado slid out. The ducks quacked and squabbled round our feet.
Rupert wasn’t eating his sandwich, just picking at the crust. We sat there quietly for a few minutes.
‘Sounds interesting,’ he said, in the end. ‘Robotics.’
‘Not really. It’s just components for some industrial thing.’
‘Been there long?’
‘Look. Thanks for the lunch but look … I’m sorry. And what about your wife? We must both forget it.’ I threw a bit of avocado in the pond and a crowd of ducks splashed in after it, jostling and quacking.
‘I don’t expect they get much avocado,’ he said.
I could feel the worms of champagne trickling through the straw, wriggling in my veins, and I had to fight not to smile. I took another bite of the sandwich, delicious mixture of textures and tastes: soft nutty bread, salty bacon, avocado velvety smooth.
‘Do you always do that?’ he said, nodding at my waggling foot. I uncrossed my legs and put my feet together, squeezed them flat against the ground. Fidget Breeches someone called me once, and it’s true.
‘Tell me about your husband – Charlie, is it?’ Rupert said and to hear that name on his lips quenched any chance of a smile. ‘Do you love him?’ he said.
‘Of course.’
‘OK, what is it about him that you say you love?’
‘None of your beeswax.’
‘Go on.’
‘Not just say, do,’ I said. I took another suck of champagne. Now it was starting to work its way to my brains and I had to be back soon.
‘But what does that mean?’
‘What?’
‘Love.’
‘Love?’
‘Yes. Love.’ He looked genuinely puzzled.
‘You know,’ I said.
He frowned down at his sandwich, his black eyebrows drawing together, and when he looked up there was an unreadable sheen across his eyes. ‘But what is it about him that you love?’
I thought about it. ‘That he’s himself. He’s …’ I struggled to put it into words, ‘good,’ I decided at last, though I knew it sounded lame.
‘Good?’ Rupert said. He was tearing off little bits of bread and tossing them into the water. ‘How would you know?’
I shrugged.
‘How do you define good?’ he said.
‘Getting a bit deep, aren’t you?’
He blinked at me and I sneaked a look at my watch. Ten minutes and I’d be off.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Well for a start he’s unselfish. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
‘Faithful?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘But not you.’
‘I won’t do it again.’
‘Sure?’ His eyes found mine.
‘Sure.’
He sighed. ‘Do you really think there’s such a thing as good?’
‘Of course.’
‘And yet you are not it.’
‘I do my best,’ I said.
I sucked at the straw again but it made an empty slurping sound.
‘More?’ He offered me his bottle but I shook my head.
‘It was a lapse.’
‘A lapse,’ he repeated, thoughtfully.
The glint of the water, the light swaying in threads through the leaves of the trees, the quacking of the ducks and the ludicrous conversation were making my head spin. He put his hand on my knee. A tremble passed through me at the weight and warmth of it.
He leant close so I could feel his breath on my ear. ‘You and I both know,’ he said, ‘that there is no such thing as good.’
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ I said, getting up. But he caught my hand and tugged me back down. My knees were weak and foggy from the champagne. A guy walked past, gave me an odd sideways look and my heart went cold. Was it someone Charlie knew? I don’t go out much but when I first knew Charlie we’d go to the pub together, there were lots of faces, he had a lot of friends. Was this one of them? I didn’t recognise him but if it was … I f
elt sick.
‘For instance, my wife is not good,’ Rupert said.
‘No?’ I took my hand away. The guy had gone now, but anybody could walk past on such a lovely day.
‘She’s a bitch.’ There was a choked sound in his voice.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I just thought you might listen,’ he said. ‘After the time we spent together. There is a connection between us.’
‘I’m going.’ I stood up.
‘See the birds,’ he said. ‘Are they good?’
‘What?’
‘They’d kill each other for a beakful of bread.’ I was startled by a roughness in his voice but then he shrugged as if to say, what can you do? And smiled at me, a long dimple slanting on his cheek. He chucked the rest of his sandwich in the pond and there was a mayhem of feathers, mothers shouldering off the chicks, males snapping at females in their greedy panic.
‘Well, they seem to like mozzarella,’ he said. ‘Meet me tonight?’
‘Sorry.’
I started to walk away.
‘Please.’
‘No.’
‘Just to talk. Wouldn’t Charlie understand?’
‘No.’
‘Even though he’s so good?’ He caught me up.
‘Can’t you talk to someone else?’ I said.
‘There’s no one.’
‘Try the Samaritans.’
We were walking faster and faster back towards the gate.
‘Leave me alone,’ I said, but he just smiled and tried to take my arm. ‘Get away from me,’ I shouted. There was a woman coming towards us with a pushchair and I wanted her to hear, I thought he’d stop if someone was witnessing it, but she bent over to fuss with her child, pretending not to notice.
I speeded up almost to a run. I realised I was still clutching the bottle in my hand and threw it towards a bin but it smashed on the ground.
‘Dangerous,’ he called after me. ‘No need to run.’
Chapter 11
^
A fortnight later I called back to see Mrs Chivers. I was ready to be disappointed, or for her to demand more money up front, or to say we needed to widen the search to nationwide or somesuch – so I was taken aback when she handed me a photo of a complete stranger.
‘Here she is,’ she said.
I took the photo from her and my heart sank. This was a woman in about her mid-thirties with short dark hair, and a thin angular face.
‘Karen Wild,’ she said, ‘also known as Nina Todd. Works at Green’s Robotics as a clerical officer.’
I stared at the face but it gave nothing up to me. Maybe a trace of familiarity there, but not of Karen.
She handed me another photograph of the same woman getting into, or out of, a car, a man there too … he did look familiar. Then the woman again, standing on the doorstep, and I got a shiver through me then and almost laughed, knowing where I’d seen them. They were on my round! Forty-seven Chestnut Avenue.
‘That’s not her!’ I laughed. ‘These are customers.’
‘Customers?’
I didn’t have to explain myself to her. ‘You’ve made a mistake,’ I said.
Mrs Chivers put the full-face photo of the stranger on the table beside Karen’s and tried to convince me, pointing out the proportions of the features, but I wasn’t buying it until, ‘Watch this,’ she said. She scrolled through the documents on her computer and brought up the face of Karen. Gave me a shock seeing her there large as life scanned in and enlarged on that screen.
‘This is extraordinary technology,’ she said, ‘it’s made my job a lot easier I can tell you. Now,’ she clicked on a menu, ‘we’ll age her fifteen years – or we could make it twenty … life’s hard inside.’ As I watched, something happened to the face right in front of my eyes – the cheeks slimming down, the jaw sharpening, a girl’s round face changing to a woman’s. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘put yourself in her shoes. If you had long fair hair and you wanted a different look?’
‘Short,’ I said.
‘Spot on. Short and dark.’ And the face of Karen mutated into the face in the photograph, the woman I’d met on her own doorstep and never given a second glance.
‘There’s one difference,’ she said, but I couldn’t see it, not till she pointed out the different length of the nose. ‘You’d see it more in profile. You said she had some money. If you were intent on changing your appearance and you had money, what would you do?’ She sounded pleased with herself. ‘On the fourth of October last year, less than a week after her release, Nina Todd booked into the Bartlett Clinic for a nose reconstruction for which she paid two thousand six hundred and fifty pounds.’
She put the photos and information into an envelope. ‘I wish all my cases were as straightforward,’ she said.
I paid the balance and left. That was that: a fortnight, five hundred quid and the search was over. It was almost too easy and the shock of it sent me into a spin for the rest of that day. I’d actually been face to face with her. Maybe only once or twice – it was usually the bloke who came to the door on Saturdays. But still, I’d been that close, close enough to sniff her, to look hard into her face, and never had a clue.
Kept on delivering that week: one full cream; one semi-skimmed. All fingers and thumbs, dropped a pint on the path when I got near her door. Then it got to Saturday. A later start and I call at each house for the week’s money. Some leave it out in an envelope, which is a risk I personally wouldn’t take. Chestnut Avenue is what you’d term a ‘nice’ street and number forty-seven is a white semi, bay-windowed, chestnut tree outside. I sat in my float getting psyched up. The curtains were open but there was no movement. Then the old woman from the bottom flat came out. She came through the gate right up to me.
‘I’ve been waiting for my cup of tea, young man,’ she said, ‘while you sit there twiddling your thumbs. You can cancel the full cream from now on, I’m fetching it from the shop.’
‘Sorry, madam,’ I said. ‘I’m not feeling too well. Needed a minute …’ I wasn’t sure if the ‘madam’ wasn’t overdoing it but she didn’t seem to think so.
She looked at me. ‘Oh well then, I’ll take it from you.’ I hopped down and got her a pint from the back. ‘And you should get home and put your feet up.’
‘I’ll do that,’ I said.
She took her milk and went back round the side of the house. I went through the gate, broken as long as I’ve been calling, to the front door and rang the bell. Nothing at first though I could hear a radio on in the distance, hear the nine o’clock pips. Then footsteps, the door opening and the bloke standing there. Mr C. Martin, as he’s listed in my order book, in a dressing gown.
‘Milk,’ I said.
‘Yeah, cheers, hold on.’ He left the door open and went back into the house calling, ‘Nina? Got any cash?’
I heard her voice then. ‘In my purse.’
I nudged the door open a bit wider with my foot so I could see into the hall. Done up like an old person’s place, flowery carpet and suchlike. A dark-coloured sideboard. I could see him looking in the drawer.
‘Where?’ he called.
And then she came into the hall. She was in a pinkish tracksuit, or maybe it was pyjamas. She stayed back in the dimness but I could see her lean past him and pull the purse from the drawer.
‘Right under your nose,’ she said and kissed him on the cheek. So they were together. A fast worker then. I wondered where the old lady fitted in. He came to the door to pay me.
‘Women, eh?’ I said, thinking maybe to get something out of him, but he just smiled, took his change and milk and shut the door. Did he know what he was living with?
Chapter 12
*
I had an appointment with Rose so I left work early. Stepping out on to the street, I looked around for Rupert but he wasn’t there. No one followed me on the way to Rose’s office, nor on the way home. I breathed out as I walked up Chestnut Avenue. Spring had really got a grip and though it was after five, th
e sun still glowed on the brick walls and the rows of tulips. I stopped to stroke a melting cat – and to look behind me once again.
Fay and her friend Maisie were in the front garden planting a bush. Fay was kneeling with a trowel, Maisie pulling the twiggy thing out of its pot. Fay was tiny, head the size of a coconut, and Maisie, with her trunk-shaped legs and slabby bosom, towered over her.
‘What is it?’ I said.
‘Ceanothus.’ Fay slipped me a glance.
‘That’ll just fill the gap nicely,’ Maisie said. ‘I’ll tease out the roots.’ She began to claw at the gnarly pot-shaped tangle. ‘See these little blossoms?’ She pointed out some blue flowers. ‘Next year it’ll be a picture.’
‘Cup of tea or anything?’ I said.
‘We’re quite all right, you get along,’ Fay said and I went off into the house.
Despite the weather I wanted to draw the curtains, get into my dressing gown and lie on the sofa till Charlie got back from Bradford. I like winter best when you can stay inside and no one thinks it’s strange. I ran a deep bath, and wallowed, with the radio on quietly, not taking anything in but soothed by the sound of the voices. I lay there till the water was cold and scummy. Afterwards I fried myself an egg, listening to the sounds of Fay and Maisie below me. A meaty smell was floating up, chops maybe. I was glad Fay had company for tea. I sat in front of the telly and watched the egg yolk run and soak into the toast. There was a phlegmy skim of white left and I couldn’t eat it.
Charlie rang to say he’d be back very late and not to wait up.
‘I don’t mind waiting up,’ I said.
‘I’ll just want to crash out,’ he said.
‘We can crash together then. You’ll only wake me when you come in – I might as well wait up.’
‘How’s Dave?’
‘Haven’t been yet.’
‘Tell him I’ll be round tomorrow.’
‘OK.’
I could have lied and said I’d gone and not gone, but I got dressed again and caught the bus to Dave’s. I thought I’d drag him out for a pint or two. The sky was dabbed with pink. I thought it might cheer him up. I rang and rang the front doorbell but no one answered. I walked round the block, then went back and tried again. Tripod, the three-legged cat who lived in the basement flat, wound round my legs, purring like an outboard motor. I stooped to stroke him, then stood back to look up. But it was no good, Dave’s window was too high to see. And all it would have been was curtains, anyway.
Nina Todd Has Gone Page 4