by Fiona Harper
Claire smiled to herself as she got back into the car. ‘When I’m like what?’ she called out.
‘Right,’ Maggs replied, as she opened her front door and disappeared.
Chapter Nine
By the Light of the Silvery Moon
Claire was having the strangest dream. The sun was warm on her skin and the waves of a clear turquoise sea lapped against the edges of the little rowing boat she was sitting in. Okay, that didn’t seem strange at all. In fact, it was rather lovely, and if that had been all there was to the dream she probably would have enjoyed it.
She glanced down and saw a flash of something in the sand and rocks thirty feet below. At first she thought it must be a little fish, the sun glinting off its scales, but then she realised the shiny thing wasn’t moving.
The thought slid through her head like a whisper. Treasure …
She stood up, prepared to dive in, and that’s when things got strange. Instead of hearing a splash and discovering her body slipping through the cool water, there was something more akin to a boing and she bounced right off it. It was as if the whole surface of the sea had turned into a stretchy, rubbery, see-through skin and as hard as she tried she couldn’t break through. It was most frustrating.
Eventually, she sat down, cross-legged on the undulating surface and folded her arms. The waves ran under her, making her bob up and down, just as if she’d been on a trampoline and someone else was jumping on the other end.
The only sounds were the gentle rustle of her hair in the breeze and the slap of the waves against the hull of the boat. She wasn’t sure how the boat didn’t just sit on the water like she did, rolling over onto one side, but it didn’t. Apparently, it was just her having this strange problem.
As she sat there, wondering what to do next, she started to think she could hear music. At first it was just a tickle at the corner of her consciousness, and she wasn’t even sure if it was coming from inside or outside her head, but then it grew louder.
Outside. Definitely outside.
She got excited again. Perhaps it was mermaids. Anything seemed possible in this strange place she’d found herself in.
The music grew steadily in volume, a bass beat thrumming through the rubbery sea surface and vibrating on her bare legs. Maybe not mermaids after all. Not unless they were the kind that didn’t like operatic arpeggios, but pounding metal verging on the edge of goth …
That was when Claire woke up. The boat, the sun, the strange waves were all sucked back into her subconscious. The music, however, remained.
She sat up and pushed the hair out of her face, trying to make sense of it all, waiting for the music to disappear with the rest of the dream. It didn’t. It just carried on thumping, like the beginning of one of those headaches she got sometimes that sat right behind her left eye. She put one foot on the floor and felt the vibration of it through the polished boards.
It became crystal clear that this had nothing to do with the dream and everything to do with the nightmare who lived downstairs.
Okay. This was it. She’d just about had enough.
Not only had there been the whole bike incident, and the letterbox that ever-spouted pizza delivery leaflets. She’d also had to deal with his bins again. He hadn’t pulled them forward on rubbish collection day, so she’d had to do it. She’d have left them, and rejoiced at the thought of him rotting away in his own mess, if it hadn’t been for the very real possibility of attracting rats. Or foxes. It was bad enough pulling his stinky dustbin to the kerb, but she wasn’t about to gather up the contents once they’d been strewn halfway down the street by a vixen looking for a nice juicy chicken carcass.
Of course that had meant yet another note. And yet another cheeky reply.
She knew she should have left it at that, but for some reason letting him have the last word didn’t sit well with her. Her pile of posh stationery in the kitchen was diminishing rapidly, along with her live-and-let-live, que sera, sera philosophy. She was doing her best to ignore everything but the troubles each day brought; it just seemed that each day brought a new batch from Mr Dominic flipping Arden.
She stood up and marched across the bedroom. No more notes. This was it. It was about time the pair of them had some face-to-face communication. And, if her palm met the side of his face during that communication, so much the better.
She stomped down the stairs, growing angrier with each step, because she knew the volume of her neighbour’s music was robbing her of the satisfaction of knowing he’d heard them too.
When she got to his front door, she knocked on it. Sharply, but loudly.
Nothing. At least, nothing but that infernal music. What was he? Seventeen?
She tried again, this time pounding with her fist. Still nothing. She waited again. Five minutes she stayed there, alternately knocking then folding her arms and staring at the door, her toes tapping in impatience. Once or twice she found she’d accidentally fallen in with the rhythm of the music and that just infuriated her further.
Eventually, she stormed off back upstairs and slammed her front door as hard as she could. So he wasn’t just an inconsiderate, lazy, pasty-faced technology geek, but a coward too. She should have known.
She went back to bed and rummaged through the drawer in her bedside table until she found the earplugs she always took on long plane journeys. She squished them into her ears and lay there, shoulders tense, armed folded across the top of the sheet and stared at the ceiling.
It was no good. She could still hear it.
At least she thought she could. It might just be the memory of all that noise echoing off the inside of her skull, like hearing an extra chime after the church bells had stopped ringing. She turned over and shoved her head underneath her pillow.
Please let him leave soon, she prayed fervently, as she waited for her blood pressure to drop back down to normal. She didn’t know when, but it had to be soon, didn’t it? And she’d be crossing the days off her calendar with a fat red squeaky marker until he did.
*
Dominic woke with a start. He was lying on his sofa in his living room and had no memory of how he’d got there. For some reason, he could hear the end of the last song on one of his favourite albums playing in his head, but all around him everything was completely silent.
He looked up and noticed his iPod, still lit up, sitting in its dock.
Ah. Now he remembered.
He’d been feeling particularly restless this evening. Probably because now he’d been back in the UK for more than a week, he was noticing that his days were kind of empty. He’d decided to listen to some good music to get this feeling of being trapped, grounded, out of his system. Somewhere in the middle of it, he must have fallen asleep.
Now, for most people that might have been impossible, but not for Dominic. He’d always been able to drop off anywhere, even when he’d been a teenager, and it had served him well on his travels most of the time. When he’d gone backpacking with uni buddies, they’d always complained about noise and hard beds and strange smells, but none of it had bothered him. He just closed his eyes and he was away.
Even staying in some of the really dodgy places his work took him to hadn’t been that bad. If he ever did have problems sleeping, he stuck his earphones in his ears and played music, sometimes quite loud, reasoning that it was often silence punctuated by unexpected noises that woke him up. If he could choose something with a consistent volume level it became white noise, lulling him to sleep. It was the sudden quiet at the end of an album that often roused him these days.
The iPod blinked off and he sat up, stretched and yawned. At least he was feeling sleepy now. And it was dark. Finally, his body clock was returning to some sort of normal pattern. About time too. He stumbled off into his bedroom where he ripped off his clothes and fell into bed. A few seconds after he hit the mattress, he was sleeping the sleep of the innocent.
*
He was still in a pretty good mood when he emerged from his flat to
go for a run at eleven o’clock the next morning. He looked out for a little white rectangle on his doormat and wasn’t disappointed. Somewhere along the line, the war of notes between him and his upstairs neighbour had become a source of entertainment.
Hmm. A signal that he definitely needed to get out more. He had the research for a new documentary he wanted to do on free divers – the particular kind of mental discipline required, the tight-knit community of enthusiasts, the dangers – but it was desk work, his least favourite kind, and would hardly get him out the flat much. Pete had texted him a couple of times and he’d texted back, but they hadn’t seen each other since that incident at his house last week.
Which meant he needed an alternative social life. One involving female company would be good, no matter what Pete said.
Just thinking about how his best friend had summed him up still made his jaw clench. Just because Pete had a point, it didn’t mean he had to lay it on quite so thick. He’d exaggerated, as always.
Dominic frowned. No way was he a total romantic disaster! But Pete couldn’t see that. All Pete could see was his little nest of domestic bliss and he measured – and judged – everyone, including his best friend, against that. The only problem was that Dominic knew Pete was so stubborn he was never going to let go of the idea that his best friend was a romantic pariah unless he was faced with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.
A thought pinged inside Dominic’s head, so clearly and so brightly, that he was sure that if he looked in the mirror, there’d be a glowing light bulb above his head.
That was it! The solution to both his problems in one fell swoop.
He’d find a nice girl to date and be as romantic as he could possibly be, maybe even take her round to Pete and Ellen’s for a meal or something. Not that he’d be rubbing his friend’s face in it …
Well, not much.
But, as he played out the scenario in his head, he started to feel a little restless. He didn’t want a girlfriend, remember? He didn’t want to do ‘long term’, not even if it caused Pete to eat a double portion of humble pie.
Hang on a moment, he thought to himself. You’ve been moving around too much, thinking of relationships in terms of days and weeks instead of months. He’d be gone by the beginning of September at the very latest. Why was he panicking? It’d be perfect. Long enough to wine and dine a girl, but short enough that no one was in danger of getting really serious. No hearts would be broken, and Pete would still have to eat his words. That is, he would if he and Dominic were speaking by then.
He sighed. It would blow over. Their fights always did. But he was still pretty peeved at the moment and he and Pete were both male and pigheaded, which meant saying sorry was not an option. The other option, the one they always chose, was to wait a couple of weeks for everyone to cool off, meet up for a pint and pretend that nothing had happened.
He’d call Pete next Thursday.
Which meant he was going to be spending a lot of time on his own until then. This was the downside of his life, the one he never noticed when he was busy travelling from place to place, one he didn’t like much now it was taking great pains to point itself out.
It was hard to keep relationships of any kind going when he was only around for a week or so every few months. Every time he visited friends, they seemed to have moved on months and years – getting engaged, getting hitched, popping out sprogs – while he had stayed the same. Sometimes he had a few new stories or maybe another scar but, yep, pretty much the same. It was a bit like being a time traveller, only he’d travelled in Dominic years instead of light years.
Ugh. Well. He had this thing he’d been given an invite to for tonight. Maybe he should go to that. He knew the guy wanted him to do a documentary about him, but it really wasn’t his kind of thing. Still, he could eat and drink on someone else’s money and have a chance to tell the rather persistent businessman no to his face. Email refusals didn’t seem to be working.
He decided to cheer himself up by reading Ms Bixby’s note before he headed out and started pounding the London streets in his trainers. He was starting to build a picture of her in his head, prompted by that first comparison to Mrs McClure: grey hair set like the Queen’s, a polyester paisley dress straight out of the seventies, horn-rimmed glasses and the kind of matronly figure that suggested armour-plated boobs. If she was anything like his old headmistress, he’d win her round eventually. She’d scold him and call him an impossible boy, but when he left the room she’d smile secretly to herself.
He opened up the envelope and leaned against his front door, intending to post it through his own letterbox when he was finished. This note, however, contained none of the usual sarcastic gems he’d become accustomed to. In fact, it was rather bald and rather short.
Dear Mr Arden
If you ever, ever play music again that loud at two o’clock in the morning, I will be contacting the council’s noise pollution team. It was most rude and inconsiderate, but I suppose I should have learned to expect that from you.
Ms C. Bixby
Uh-oh. He’d stepped over a line, he could tell.
Okay, maybe he’d accidentally stepped over plenty of Ms Bixby’s lines since he’d been back, but somehow this felt like a big one, one that it would be very difficult to tiptoe back behind.
Had the music really been that loud? He hadn’t thought so. He’d played it that volume before and she’d never complained.
He pulled his door key out of his pocket and opened his front door. Well, she’d complained now. He felt a bit bad, especially after she’d done his bins for him the other day. It can’t have been easy for a crotchety old thing like her.
Oh, flip. He was going to have to do it, wasn’t he? He was going to have to say the ‘s’ word and … he swallowed … apologise. He headed for the kitchen and picked up his wallet. He could run later. What he needed to do now was go and buy a peace offering.
Now, where in trendy old Islington did they sell stuff like knitted toilet roll covers and crochet hooks?
Chapter Ten
Ready, Willing and Able
Claire arrived at The Hamilton at five to eight. She took a moment to gaze at the recently renovated hotel, now restored to its full Art Deco glory, before going inside. The exterior had been a muddy brown a couple of years ago, but now the stone was almost white, the black-leaded windows stark against its paleness. She skipped up a couple of steps and through the heavy revolving door.
Even though she’d visited quite a few times since it had opened, she always got a little tingle down her spine every time she stepped inside. This is how a good hotel should make you feel, like magic was in the air, like you were on a Hollywood set, full of love and laughter and singing and dancing.
Not that there was much singing and dancing going on in The Hamilton’s lobby, and she suspected the suave-looking doorman might firmly eject her if she tried to tap dance along the exquisite black and white marble floor tiles or see if she could shatter the crystal chandelier with a high C. No, The Hamilton was far too classy for that, but the gold leaf, the clean elegance, made her think of the heyday of Tinseltown, something that made her heart beat a little bit faster. She could almost imagine Sinatra at the glossy black grand piano near the fireplace or Monroe trotting through the lobby in a sable coat, black-gloved palm splayed in front of her face to ward off the swarming photographers.
And there was Doug, looking completely at home as he lounged on the dark marble reception desk smiling and chatting with one of the staff. He’d insisted on picking Claire up, but she’d stood her ground and had insisted just as strongly that she’d meet him here.
He turned and spotted her and his whole face broke into a wide smile. Claire couldn’t help smiling back. There was something very nice about someone being pleased to see you, even if they could be a bit of a pain in the backside sometimes.
‘Claire!’ he said, holding his arms wide and walking towards her. He had that easy confidence about him that m
eant he fitted in everywhere. He looked just at home in her shop as he did in this elegant hotel lobby. He never doubted that the world would open its tightly clenched fist for him, to give him what he desired. She envied him that. It had taken years after her father had left for her to believe she shouldn’t feel guilty about anything nice that happened in her life.
She let him kiss her on the cheek and, when he offered his arm, she took it. ‘You do remember though, Doug? This isn’t—’
‘A date,’ he finished for her. ‘Yes, believe me, you’ve been very clear about that.’ He smiled as he said it and leaned in to press the brass plate for the lift button. ‘But if I can’t wine you and dine you, I’m going to make sure I introduce you to every person in the room and make sure Far, Far Away is the roaring success it deserves to be.’
They rode the lift up in silence and, when the doors whispered open, it was a revelation. She’d seen pictures of the new rooftop bar and terrace, of course, but being there in person was something else. While the rest of the hotel was all elegance and lovingly restored period features, The Terrace, as it was simply called, was one hundred per cent, cutting-edge twenty-first century.
The bar area sat in the middle of the roof, an imposing box of plate glass, furnished in brown and cream with sofas and chaises longues in weird organic shapes. Surrounding the bar was a wide terrace, filled with large square sectional sofas clustered round low tables with storm lanterns on them. Everything was clean lines, pared-down elegance, making way for the real star of the show – the London skyline.
The city lay glittering in the dusk beyond the low glass wall that ran round most of the terrace. In one direction, The Shard, another the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament. Turn again and you could invent a new game thinking up nicknames for the various strange buildings that were sprouting up around The Gherkin in the City.