‘What?’
‘Breakfast.’
‘Are you mad?’ I said.
He paused as if honestly considering this, then found a couple of glasses. But he was right. Eating weighs you down, body and mind, and stops you flying off. There’s a fine balance for birds, Charlie told me, between not eating enough to fly and eating so much they can’t.
‘What is it with you and champagne?’ I asked.
‘Not wasting the real stuff on you any more,’ he said. His voice was rougher, no more of the suede.
‘But there’s nothing to eat.’
He peered into the fridge at the tub of margarine, something under clingfilm, the dead salad and a single dubious egg.
‘I thought you’d have food,’ he said. ‘What’s in the freezer?’ He opened it and pulled out a lasagne. ‘This’ll do,’ he said. ‘You having one?’
I shook my head. I poured some orange juice. It was freshly squeezed; at least the label claimed it was, thick with flecks, sweet and sharp.
‘Not very domesticated, are we?’ He popped the top of the wine and made two glasses of Buck’s fizz.
‘I’ll stick to juice,’ I said.
He shrugged his shoulders. I picked up the lasagne, pierced the film and shoved it in the microwave.
‘Your hair’s an interesting colour,’ he said with a sort of snigger.
Through the door of the microwave I watched the rectangular box revolve, the plastic on top billowing in the blast of heat and Fay in there waving. ‘Did you know your ear is brown?’ he said. The kitchen filled with the smell of hot cheese. ‘You should have kept your hair the way it was. Long, blonde. That was pretty. Angelic was how they put it, remember? Coffee? Didn’t they let you keep it long inside?’
I filled the kettle. ‘No milk.’
‘Did you get real coffee in prison?’
His eyes followed me about. The microwave pinged and I tipped the slimy oblong of meat and cheese on to a plate.
He pushed the glass of fizz towards me and I took a sip. The orange flecks had risen in the foam to make a fruity scum.
‘You said revenge,’ I said. ‘I don’t … who are you?’
He held his hand up as if to say wait and ate his way steadily through the lasagne, chopping the slippery pasta with the side of his fork. I watched the red fat seep out and run over the plate.
He looked up and met my eyes. ‘Not bad,’ he said. He got up, found the cafetière and made coffee. Strange to see him moving about in the kitchen. There was a feather stuck to the top of the coffee jar and he held it between his fingers, stroked it the wrong way so that the filaments stood out and set my teeth on edge.
‘I see you’ve offloaded the bird. Or did it die? Or did you …’
‘A friend’s got him,’ I said quickly, a catch in my voice on the word ‘friend’. I thought longingly then, and I never thought I could have longed for this, to be sitting at my desk at Green’s Robotics with Christine nattering away beside me, back in what already seemed like a golden age of safety.
Rupert stretched out his long legs, faded jeans, grubby at the knee. The same jeans he’d been wearing when we were hundreds of miles away. The first time I’d seen him in anything that looked less than brand new. He pushed down the top of the cafetière, looked at my waggling foot and said, ‘Can’t you sit still?’
I scrunched my toes in the woolly socks and felt all the muscles tense in my legs right up to my neck and skull.
‘Who are you?’ I said again.
He poured the coffee. ‘The name’s Mark. Mark Curtis. And yours, as we know, is Karen Wild.’
I picked up a spoon and flipped it back and forwards, watching the reflection, a warping Nina rolling over and over in the smeary steel like someone falling through the sea. He told me he’d been eleven when Isobel, his eighteen-year-old sister, had gone missing just before Christmas. ‘Imagine that Christmas,’ he finished and then, ‘Put that down.’ I did put the spoon down and saw that there was dye in my nails as if I’d clawed someone to death.
Fay listened from the lampshade, a wisp of cobweb like a question mark, as he told me how his mother’s heart had broken when Isobel’s body was found; how she’d been house-bound ever since. ‘I have to make it up to her somehow,’ he said. He got up and went to the window; I think to hide his face. His back was rigid, I could hear little sounds in his throat as he struggled to get himself under control. I stroked the numb ridge on my hand. Noticed a wet drop of orange on my dressing gown. Life is so messy. Even the simple things like eating and drinking.
‘I’m sorry about what happened,’ I said. And I meant it. There’s an expression ‘my heart bleeds for you’ and though it is a cliché it is so accurate, the flowing leaky feeling in the chest, pure empathic sorrow.
‘I feel for you,’ I said and then he laughed and it was not like him, it was as if something inside him had flown apart. His arms flailed, his hands flapped, his face cracked. It was like a shameful private act and I looked away until he’d finished. It was not Rupert’s laugh. There was a long silence, soured by its ugly echo. Fay shrivelled up and vanished.
‘Rupert …’ I said; I could not think of him as anything other than Rupert although that laugh had not been Rupert’s.
‘Yes, Nina?’ He went and stood behind me. It chilled me when his shadow fell across me, almost as if it was cold.
Chapter 38
^
I put my hands on her shoulders from behind, like a lover would. You could feel the flinch go right through.
‘What do you want?’ she said.
‘I want you to come with me.’
‘Why?’
She made no attempt to escape from my hands. I could have slid them down and touched her up. I could have done anything. She was only wearing the dressing gown with not much under as far as I could see.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘You seem different.’
Of course I laughed at that. Different! She didn’t know how right she was.
‘Don’t,’ she said.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Laugh like that. It’s scary.’ Of course that only set me off again.
She curled herself forward on the table, head in her hands, then she said, all muffled, ‘Please tell me what you want.’
‘I told you,’ I said.
‘Why?’ She sat up and twisted her head round towards me. ‘Not unless you tell me why.’ I put my hands on her shoulders again and, almost of their own accord, they moved together round her neck. It was small and soft in my hands. The natural instinct was to squeeze. I could feel the life flowing and beating in the tube of her neck. After a moment I let go and she gasped in a gulp of air.
‘Coming then?’ I said and you could tell she’d got the message loud and clear, the way she nodded. Not that she had any choice. Her face was red and there were tears standing in her eyes but I didn’t look. Having a sister teaches you about women and their wiles. It was not in the original plan but I had to tie her up.
‘I won’t go anywhere,’ she said. She didn’t cave in easily – you have to give her that. She went on trying to make out she’d wait for me while I got the car but I wasn’t born yesterday. I tied and gagged her, dressing-gown cord, hankie stuffed in her mouth, put her in the cupboard under the stairs while I went to fetch the car.
I hailed a taxi back to Peerless View. There was her room all waiting for her. I did some finishing touches to be hospitable. The cupboard smelt damp so I folded the things on a little table, neat piles like in a shop. I put the picture of Charlie by her bed. A nice detail, I thought. As I arranged her nightie on the pillow, I had the strange idea I was preparing a room for a bride but it was only that the creature comforts might make her more likely to co-operate.
When I locked up and went out down the dark and oily stairs it was with a kind of thrill in me, knowing that next time I came in it would be with her. I kept catching myself laughing with the up
roar of it all. Not like a birdwatcher, more like a fisherman about to land a big ’un. I should have waited, had a coffee, a shave, a bit of a sober up, but there was the thought of her in that cupboard. She couldn’t get out herself, I was sure of that much, but there was the chance someone else might turn up. How did I know who had the key?
So I drove straight back in the car – and got stopped. I don’t know what drew the attention to me, first thing I knew a police car was passing me, flashing and indicating pull over. ‘Licence, sir?’ the policeman said and asked me the number plate of the car. It took the smirk off his face when I rattled it off and produced my licence.
‘Have you had a drink this morning, sir?’ he said.
‘Absolutely not!’ I said and, ‘Chance would be a fine thing!’ I was cursing the stubble, the scruffy clothes, not changed since I left Orkney what with all the stress, which is not like me, personal hygiene is normally top of my agenda.
‘In that case, sir, if you wouldn’t mind stepping out of the car?’ It was going to be a breathalyser. I was going to be stopped from driving. And then I remembered Dad saying the police were after me. Now they had the licence with my name. I did something I never thought I’d have had the nerve to do. I put my foot down. It was like TV, the car chase through the streets, heads snapping round to look, and there was a kind of thrill in it, making me laugh. It was more like TV than real life but then so much is these days. I remember lights and a bump of some kind and I don’t understand entirely how, but I gave them the slip. I drove down a street that may have been one way and had to leave the car, climb over a wall and run through a garden, a kid on a swing screaming her head off. Over the wall and back out on the street, forcing myself to walk not to draw attention and heart going like the clappers. Made it back to Peerless View and in and got the door locked behind me.
It was panic stations and I didn’t know which way to turn. I was running with sweat and sick with the excitement of it and got to the sink just in time. When it was all out of me I ran water to clean the sink. One of those rubbery things on the end of the tap like at home so you can direct the water where you want. All the lumps of sick stuck in the plughole and the water wouldn’t make them go and that nearly had me heaving again.
What I wanted was to pull myself together and have a shower but there was no shower, only the big stained bath that made me think of coffins. The flat was dark what with the boarding on some of the windows and the dirt on the rest. I ran a bath and got in there, head under, until I’d calmed down then had a coffee. I shaved and dressed in my Rupert finery. My fingers were shaking when I did up the buttons. I rubbed a clear place on the mirror and practised the voice and smile. He was growing fainter, outgrowing his usefulness. Just this one last go.
I went through the options. One was just to leave her. Most likely no one would come. How long she’d last without food or drink, I didn’t know for definite. Three or four days? It would be a long and drawn-out death and fitting, to be shut in a cupboard, similar to the way Isobel died. I decided on that. The easy option. I went to the pub for a sandwich but I couldn’t settle. The feeling of her life between my hands would not go away, it was a kind of flowing. I changed my mind. There was the room ready for her for a start. It would be an anticlimax after all the planning and anticipation. And there was the chance that she’d be found and the police would be involved. I went cold when I realised another mistake I’d made: telling her my real name.
I thought of Mum then, thinking what it would do to her if I ended up inside. I could picture her sitting up in bed in her usual way, magazines, TV, biscuit tin, and then the phone ringing, or perhaps the police would make a personal appearance at her bedside. It did not bear thinking about. I had to get to Karen and bring her back. Now I had no car but it came to me that there was his car, which would be the perfect thing, not a car anyone would be looking out for. I’d noticed the keys when I was going over the house and I could picture them now, on a row of hooks in the hall. It was a risk going out again at all with them looking for me. I would wait till dark, keep my head down going then drive back with every care. If I was stopped it would be all up for me, but why should I be stopped? Stone-cold sober, cleanly shaved, well spoken, well versed in all aspects of the Highway Code and driving an old black Audi. Not the type to draw attention.
The more I thought about it, the calmer I became. Calm and decided would be a way of putting it. It made me smile to think that I’d been envisaging hordes of police with roadblocks and suchlike but what had I really done? Had one too many before I drove and then made a dash for it rather than blow into a bag. Hardly the crime of the century.
I was worried about having left the house unlocked all day. I had to be watchful. If she’d been found they’d be lying in wait. I walked up and down Chestnut Avenue a few times just as dark was falling and no sign of anything, not a light, the curtains still open. I took the bull by the horns and walked straight up to the door like any innocent caller.
When I was sure the coast was clear, I put on gloves and went round the back and into the kitchen. When I put on the light it was like the Marie Celeste, all just as we’d left it, dirty plate and glasses on the table, a chair on the floor. Her mobile was on the worktop. I had a look and there were four missed calls. They were all from someone called Rose, who must be her probation officer. They said where was she? What happened at work? She’d broken the terms of her licence and could expect arrest. So the police were after the pair of us now.
‘Karen?’ I called. I stood there in the dark looking at the little triangle of door under the stairs. I switched on the light. Silent as the grave was the phrase that came to me. I could have done with a bit of reassurance from her, a knock or a grunt. The keys were just where I’d pictured them. I went outside to start the car.
On the front passenger seat was a box of jellies. It was like a sign to me from Isobel and the sweetness of it made me strong. I opened the box and took one, red – when she was in charge she would have the red and black ones and only let me have the yellow and green. The sugar melted round my teeth as I turned the key. If it hadn’t started I don’t know what. It took a few tries but then it went. I backed it as close up to the front door as possible. I sat in the car a minute, wanting in a cowardly way to drive off out of it. But I could not do that having come this far. If she was dead then she was dead and I didn’t know what, but I could not afford to be seen by any neighbours sitting in that car. I left the engine running and the back door open and went inside.
I steeled myself to kneel down and open the triangular door. It was pitch black in there and I could see nothing. I put a hand in and got hold of a leg, bare and cold. I jerked my hand back wondering if this was the famous chill of death, but then she groaned. I pulled her out of there, floppy as they come and not quite with it and she’d also wet herself which was an unpleasantness I hadn’t counted on.
After a check for passers-by, I lifted her into the car, got the door shut and – this comes from watching TV crime which is like a training course for the criminally minded – went round with a J-cloth and wiped my prints from every surface I might have touched that morning.
It was simple then to drive back, pull the car into the yard and lock the gates. The wall at the back has glass in it like shark fins for that added bit of security. I carried her out, up the stairs and into her new room.
She soon came round when she saw her new abode. I offered her Pot Noodles as well as a drink but she’d got the hump and wouldn’t answer. I took her in a Horlicks with some digestives and locked the door. I had put a bucket in there, in case she was caught short again.
It left me all on edge, the upset of it all, took away something of the triumph of the moment. I paced up and down the hall outside the locked door, listening for a sound. I could hear nothing. There had been a bit of rough handling in all the kerfuffle. I was like a new parent must be, wanting to check all the time that she was still breathing, but I didn’t. I was so restless I went
out and found a pro. This one had ginger hair and tits like bags of frogspawn. I tried to keep from nudging up against them but they were everywhere and in the end I had to pull away.
‘It’s all right, darling,’ she said, ‘it happens to everyone,’ giving me a look of understanding that if I’d been a weaker man I’d have wiped right off her face. But I was not letting any other trouble come between Karen and myself and so I paid up in full and left. If nothing else it had passed an hour or so of the night.
Chapter 39
~
The night of the twelfth of December, the day that Jeffrey had sent her away, the day she’d heard the posh and cosy voice of his new girlfriend and smelt the cake, Karen went for a cigarette walk. She had changed so much in this new life, at this new school: no sex, except with Jeffrey; no swearing, or hardly any. She had very nearly become a nice girl, the sort of girl she used to envy and despise. She’d changed the way she spoke, opening out her northern vowels; she’d watched the body language of the girls at school and copied it. She was a good mimic and could fool almost everybody but she couldn’t fool herself. And smoking was the one habit she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, kick, her one last little trace of before.
Roger gave her pamphlets about giving up and Joan said nothing, but left photographs of lungs lying on the kitchen table: airy pink butterflies and filthy clogged-up lumps. They forbade smoking in the house. If not for that rule she may not have gone for a cigarette walk that night … if not for this, if not for that … the ifs snag at my mind like the barbs on a wire fence.
She walked through the dark streets, inhaling smoke as she peered in at the Christmas-tree lights in the windows. Sugary brightness dazzling in the frost. She went down to the sea front, to the Spa Gardens, leant on the railings, gazed out beyond the lights of the promenade to the black glitter of the sea. Waves broke with a regular sigh and the shingle rolled and grumbled. On the horizon she could see tiny points of light, a ship in the distance.
Nina Todd Has Gone Page 22