‘Terrible,’ he said. ‘Terrible. Everyone keeps telling me how great my bar is. If this lot start coming in regular I’m going to have to sell the place. It looks like something out of Ally Mac fucking Beal. They’ll start dancing in a minute.’
I laughed, and introduced Nicky to Sal. Nicky is a tall, long-boned guy around my age, with thick, shiny crow-black hair and light dark skin given by his Indian mother and English father. Nicky is very rarely found without a smile on his face, be it felt or worn, and he is always found in a very well-cut suit. Probably even in the shower. As well as maintaining his own style, the word handsome, an old-fashioned word, could have been invented for him. Sharon used to assure me that he was, in fact, too good-looking, but I think she was just being kind. Added to this is the fact that he is witty, intelligent, and has a quality so seldom found in London that it really stands out in my friend. He is genuinely interested in people. When I first met him this was what struck me most of all. How many people in the city ever even bother to ask you what you do, let alone what you think about things?
Nicky smiled broadly at Sal, making a big fuss of her, and called over to Carla behind the bar for a bottle of champagne. I noticed that it wasn’t the house brand. He asked Carla to put the Ridge somewhere safe. When the fizz came he poured three glasses and led us to a table littered with cards and wrapping paper. All the time he was his professionally charming self but I could tell that he was puzzled, even though I knew he wouldn’t say anything until we were alone. He knew that I would have offered apologies, if there were any to offer, without him having to ask.
We sat at the table for the half an hour it took for Sal and Nicky to finish the champagne. I didn’t feel that much like drinking. They made impressive inroads into a second one too. Nicky joked with Sal about the gym, asking her if it was OK for him to come down sometime; not to train, but to watch me getting hit, preferably by someone very big. Sal said sure, and asked Nicky about the time when Pete and myself had had to help him out. He shivered, and said he still got nightmares; but not about the villain. About the guy’s wife.
‘Now she was terrifying,’ Nicky said.
Shulpa came over and dragged Nicky off. He excused himself, and when he was gone Sal’s laughter relaxed into a look of gentle concern, and she rested her arms on the table.
‘So?’ she said. I didn’t need to ask what she meant. I shrugged.
‘The obvious, I suppose.’
‘Bugger.’
‘Bugger indeed.’
Sal smiled. ‘Didn’t need me yelling at you then?’
‘Shouldn’t have been there in the first place,’ I said.
‘No. But we don’t always do what we should when that happens. It’s not just some girl either, is it?’
‘No. No it isn’t.’
‘I didn’t think so,’ Sal said.
Sal let out a breath and smiled at me. I smiled back, and lifted my glass. I was glad Sal realized that there was some sort of excuse for the way I’d acted in the gym, and I was glad too that she could tell there wasn’t a lot more I wanted to say on the subject. She didn’t press me. Instead, she told me what it had been like when her husband had been killed. Her simple frank manner surprised me, making me feel very quiet inside. She told me that it had happened as a result of a long-running feud between the people he worked with and another local gang. She’d heard the car bomb from her flat, she said, and thought it was the IRA. She told me that she always knew it was possible Mike would get hit, but that nothing could have prepared her for the way she felt when he did.
‘I know it’s a cliché,’ she said, ‘but something in me died too, as soon as I found out. A whole part of me went dead, just as dead as Mike was, and it never came back to life.’
Sal’s dark amber eyes took on a look of real frailty, as memories of her husband came to her. She poured out the last of the champagne and it struck me as odd, given what we were talking about. She told me about how she had met Mike Dawes, how her lower middle-class family had hated the handsome East End tearaway their daughter fell for.
‘I still don’t talk to my mum that often,’ she said, with a deep frown. ‘She never said as much, but at the funeral I could tell she was thinking, “I knew this would happen” rather than “my poor daughter”. I could see the shame on her face at having to stand in the same church as some of the people who were there. I think she might even have been glad it happened, hoping I might be able to start again. I was still only thirty-one. But there was no way. Mike was a hard act to follow.’
‘There’s been no one else?’
‘No one serious,’ she said. She laughed at some flash then shook her head. ‘I’ve tried pretending once or twice but it’s no use. I’ve accepted it now. I’m happy the way I am.’
Sal sat back and thanked me again for dinner and we chinked glasses. Our eyes met and we both smiled at each other. Sal pushed some hair behind an ear, but kept smiling at me. For some reason I thought of her standing there in the shower and I suddenly felt very embarrassed and very young. I broke the look and there was silence for a second, until Sal remembered a joke she’d been told. It was something about a man who had an orange for a head, and though it was pure nonsense it struck me as the funniest thing I had ever heard. We both ended up screaming with laughter, which resulted in Sal going off to use the toilet. I sat back, and Nicky took the opportunity to come over. He looked concerned and it annoyed me at how perceptive my friend could be. I was actually having a really good time, enjoying listening to Sal talk, finding her strong forty-something candlelit features very easy on my eyes. I knew it would help to have a long chat with Nicky sometime soon, but right then, as they say, I just didn’t want to go there.
I could tell he was going to ask me but I was saved by Shulpa, who joined us at the table and took control of the conversation. She chatted away about all the things she’d been doing in London, while Nicky sat back in his chair with his arms folded, looking bored as a Brazilian at a test match heading for a draw. I gave him a secret wink and he moved his head from side to side. He made me laugh. He tried to look pissed off, but I could tell how much he loved his sister, how happy he really was to have her around. I’d noticed earlier, how he kept his eyes on her, from wherever he was in the room.
Sal came back from the toilet and the four of us chatted for a while. I say the four of us, Sal didn’t say that much. I could see her looking at Shulpa without a lot of fondness. When Nicky asked if she wanted anything else to drink she thanked him, but said it was time she made tracks. I stood up too, and said I’d call her a cab.
‘You’ll be lucky,’ Shulpa said. ‘We’ve just ordered five, and they told us they’d be thirty minutes, minimum. Why don’t you stay?’
Sal said that she was happy to wait, but I said I’d drive her home; it was only a fifteen-minute walk to my flat where we could pick up my car. Nicky reached in his pocket and came out with a set of car keys.
‘Take mine,’ he said, ‘it’s right outside. And more to the point, it works.’
‘Ho ho ho,’ I said. ‘There’s no need.’
‘Go on, I’ll probably kip here tonight anyway.’
‘Well, if you’re sure. Cheers. I’ll drop it straight back.’
‘Whenever,’ Nicky said. ‘And thanks for coming. And the Ridge.’
‘Just make sure you don’t drink it unless I’m here,’ I told him.
‘Oh, I get it. Don’t worry. But let’s make it sooner rather than later, OK?’ Nicky stood up and came round to us. I kissed Shulpa goodbye and she told me that it was up to Nicky’s friends to show her round London. Nicky told her that she wouldn’t want to go to the places I’d take her. He shook my hand and kissed my friend.
‘Sally, it was lovely to meet you.’
‘You too,’ Sal said. ‘Thanks a lot. And come down any time.’
‘I might just do that,’ Nicky said.
Sal and I didn’t say a lot as we drove to Crouch End in Nicky’s four-year-old Audi. The
atmosphere was as quiet and comfortable as the car. As we were pulling into her street, she said, ‘That was a real treat, Billy. I want to thank you.’
‘For me too. I was dreading it, if the truth be told.’
’Yes,’ she said. ‘I know that one.’
I slowed down and looked for a space.
‘Nicky’s a very nice guy.’
‘He is,’ I agreed. ‘One of the best.’
‘And his sister. Stunning.’
‘If you like that kind of thing,’ I said. Sal told me which of the houses was hers, and I pulled into the kerb and killed the engine.
‘She liked you,’ Sal said. ‘I could tell.’
‘Oh, really.’
‘Really. Women can always spot it. She was flirting with you like crazy. You should go back, you really should. I think you’re in there.’ Sal laughed, nervously.
‘With my best friend’s sister? Right.’
‘You think he’d mind? Don’t be silly. I’m sure Shulpa’s old enough to decide for herself who she gets it together with.’
‘And so am I,’ I said. ‘So am I.’
Sal and I sat kissing for twenty minutes, Sal’s fingers curling round the back of my neck, her mouth finding mine, and then leaving it for my cheekbones, my chin, my eyelashes. It felt like I was swimming through warm amber. After a while she pulled away. I thought she’d had second thoughts but it was only to ask me if I drank grappa, which I said I did, and then we were inside, on the sofa, not drinking grappa. After ten minutes she led me through her big, stripped-pine Georgian house to her bedroom, and her bed, where her hands found my chest, and my neck, and mine found her long, lean back, and my mouth found her breasts and her legs and her belly, her pale skin almost luminous from the light of the moon, and the streetlights coming in through the big bay window.
‘Wait here.’
Sal got out of bed, walking out towards the bathroom. She was gone for a minute or two and the room was very quiet. I sat back on the bed, resting on one elbow. When Sal came back she was naked. Very slowly she undressed me too, and she lifted the sheet and invited me beneath it, and we slipped under and into each other’s arms. Our mouths locked again, and Sal pressed her body against me. But I was gradually feeling myself becoming separate, as if I were drifting away from what was happening, as though I were gradually breaking up, into pieces that were slowly beginning to move apart. It was odd. In the car I’d really needed to kiss Sal, to feel her body, her passion locking slowly into me. But I was losing it, the spell was breaking. I tried to focus, to bring myself back on line to her, but when Sal reached for the condom she’d brought through, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. I kissed her again and went down on her, trying to find the desire that had scurried out of me, but I felt dead and empty, as if the flower that had begun to grow in me had turned out to be a puffball, cold and white. Suddenly, touching Sal became unbearable, I didn’t want to do it, and when she moved out from under me, and went to slip the condom out of its foil she could see that I didn’t want her. She put her hand on my stomach and then her head moved down my chest, but it was like I was watching it on TV, I was so far away from it.
Sal stopped what she was doing and I lay back. She didn’t look at me. I didn’t know what to say. We lay there for a long minute until I felt her turning to me.
‘Too old for you, Billy?’ Her voice was a soft soup of bitterness and understanding.
‘Sal,’ I said. My throat was as dry as my chest. ‘Come on. It’s not that. Come on.’
She left a second, and then pulled the duvet up over her breasts. She said, ‘It’s OK. I understand.’
We lay there side by side. A group of lads passed beneath her window, Arsenal fans proclaiming their loyalty to the world. It seemed like ages until their voices had trailed away. More time seemed to pass until, gradually, I could feel Sal move closer to me. I responded and her hand found mine.
‘It’s so hard to pretend,’ she said eventually, her quiet voice filling the room. ‘Why is it so hard to pretend?’
Sal moved right next to me and I held on to her, only vaguely realizing how hard her teeth were biting into the side of my chest. I couldn’t feel them. I couldn’t feel anything.
* * *
Outside there was no one, the street was empty and city-quiet, the leaves on the plane trees almost unnaturally still. It was just gone two and I was wide awake. I took three measured breaths, knowing that sleep would be impossible, and wondered if Nicky was still up. That talk, maybe. Then the Bradleys came to me. My mind seemed clear, sharp as crystal. I sat on a low wall and ran the events through my head, clicking from person to person like a slide show. I wanted to do something, to act. But I had no point of focus, nothing to get to grips with, only a number of places I could hang around on the off chance of seeing the kid. Maybe I should go and see Nicky after all. I couldn’t decide.
Then I realized that I had Nicky’s Audi, and that therefore no one would recognize me if I was in it, no one who knew my car. I had a thought. Why not make use of it? I stood up, and walked the twenty yards towards it, disabled the alarm and got in. I drove quickly, but not too fast, getting to the place in about twenty minutes. I was lucky. I found a space right opposite and parked. I suddenly worried that I was in fact too close, that I’d be seen, but I told myself not to be stupid. You wouldn’t notice someone in a car at night, especially if it was just another car you didn’t recognize. All the same, I pulled it a yard or so backward to get it out from beneath a streetlight.
I waited. I didn’t have my camera but it didn’t matter. I didn’t really expect anyone to be around. Not really. It was just something to do, something to do instead of lying in bed staring at the ceiling. I sat, with the radio on low, telling myself I was being stupid, eventually hoping that nothing would happen. After twenty minutes I was convinced that nothing would happen and my hand reached forward for the ignition key.
But then, before I could turn my wrist, two figures appeared at the end of the road. They were obviously on their way home from somewhere, and they walked towards me. I stayed still, knowing that if I did, then they wouldn’t be able to see me through the dark windscreen. Not that they’d be looking – it was just an anonymous Audi. Then the two people walked closer and I could tell that yes, it was them. Definitely.
The two figures stepped up to the doorway. I thought for a second that Sharon was wearing a top that I’d bought her, but it was a different one. She disengaged her arm from that of her friend and as she fished in her bag for her keys the man she was with turned round to the square. He looked as though he could tell I was watching him. He looked around. He was a very tall, very thin man, with the beginnings of a slight paunch, and a chin that was beginning to give a bit. He had a suit on that hung off him rather, and I could see a tie poking out one of the side pockets. He wore round glasses, a little too big to be fashionable, and he had a studious expression on a long, tight-lipped face. I looked at his face hard, drilling my eyes into it, and a quizzical look narrowed his features. Then he turned round into the doorway. Sharon held the door for him and I got to see her face too for an instant, before the door swung shut.
A few moments later a light snapped on, in a window on the fourth floor. Nothing happened for a while until, just for a second, I caught a glimpse of a naked girl, walking into the frame to pull the curtains closed. Then she was gone. For the next ten minutes I stared at the curtains, still able to make out two thin strips of light at the edges. Then the house was dark.
Back at the bar, Shulpa was sat talking to three friends whose cab was taking ages. Nicky had already gone upstairs to bed, she told me. When her friends left Shulpa asked me if I wanted a drink, and I told her whisky, please. She walked behind the bar and fetched the bottle, setting it down on a small table. I drank a lot of it. Shulpa had a fair go too. When it was finished she asked me if I wanted any more but I said no. Then she asked me if I was OK to drive her home, which I said I was. She lived in Bayswater, she told me, in
an apartment block right next to the park. It would have been about a half-hour drive at that time of night I expect but I didn’t find out. We didn’t go there. We went to Exmouth Market instead.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Andy woke me up. His voice on the answerphone telling me I should call him. How come I never, ever got round to turning the damn sound down? I let the message end and reached for my alarm clock, which was facing the wrong way. It told me the time was 10.16. I rolled over onto my side.
Shulpa was lying on her front, still very much asleep, her head buried in the pillow, her arms either side of it. I let my eyes trace the outline of her light dark skin, from her elbow down along her breast, to her hip bone, where the rest of her body disappeared into the sheet. I pushed myself up from the futon as quietly as I could and made it into the bathroom.
In the mirror was a creased and unshaven face, which looked about as good as it had only a few weeks ago after my encounter with a cab driver and his friends. I took a razor to it, making a conscious effort to keep my hand steady, and then ran the shower. I then knelt in front of the toilet bowl, and tried to make myself vomit, hoping that the noise of the shower would mask the sound of retching if Shulpa happened to be awake. But there was no noise, because all I could manage was a few dry heaves. I gave up, showered, and raided the medicine cabinet.
Three ibuprofen went down with a glass of water, and I squirted some stuff into my eyes to clear away the red. I power-scrubbed my teeth and used some aftershave balm that was supposed to make people think that I was not an ineffective private detective/dumped boyfriend who’d just screwed his best friend’s sister as if she was a twenty-quid tart, and still too pissed to have a hangover, but a forest glade instead. I put a towel round my waist and headed back into the living area, where I noted that there was no change in the condition of my guest. The room smelled of whisky, smoke and sex. I picked up the phone and pulled the wire as far as I could towards the kitchen, letting the receiver cord fill the rest of the gap. The kitchen smelled of chicken bones about to go, and old garlic. I pushed the door to quietly and dialled the number for the station.
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