by Alex Marwood
Her head throbs. Outside in the corridor, she hears Gerard Bright’s door open up, hears him pad down the corridor and stand outside her door. He stands there for thirty seconds. He must have heard her shout. She’s starting to hate this house. Hate the way everyone knows everything about each other here.
She gets up and runs a glass of water, pops four ibuprofen from their foil and swallows them down. The room feels like a prison, the walls closing in, the ceiling pressing down on her shoulders. She massages her temples, tries to think. She doesn’t know where I am. She’s just got the phone number. And even if she finds me, she can’t make me do anything unless she arrests me. Oh, God, why did I take that job? Why? I could have worked anywhere. I should have known that nothing that paid that well was on the up and up. I did know. Who am I kidding? I knew, and I stayed there anyway.
A blast of music through the wall makes her jump. Christ. The bloody Ride of the Valkyries. He must have the amplifier up to ten. How does someone living in a place like this have speakers that size? It’s crazy. It’s impossible. What sort of person thinks it’s okay to do that to everyone living around him? He’s not bloody fifteen. He’s a full-blown adult. He probably thinks that because it’s classical that everyone’s admiring him for being an intellectual, the bloody arsehole. No problem letting other people know they’re bothering him.
She tries hammering on the wall. Thumps until her fist hurts, but the music carries on. Her blood pressure has soared since the music started, she can feel it. Her pulse is hammering in her ears and her face is burning. ‘Shut up!’ she shouts. You’re going to bloody kill me, she rages to herself, never mind Tony Stott. ‘Shut up, shut up!’
She throws herself down on the bed, grabs the pillow and crams it over her head. Hot and dark and unbearably stuffy, but still she can hear it: trumpets, trumpets, trumpets and squealing violins and the thump, thump, thump of her angry heart.
Collette swings out of bed and grabs her keys. It’s too much. It’s just too bloody much. She unlocks the door and throws it back, and storms up the corridor. Hammers on the door, her heart ready to burst out of her chest. You will not. You will not do this to me today.
The music turns down, but no one responds. She guesses he’s listening, not even sure, the noise has been so loud, that he’s really heard her knock. She raises her fist and thumps again. ‘THANK YOU!’ she shouts. ‘And bloody keep it down!’ Finds that she’s panting, hear heart still racing.
He cracks the door open and stands in the gap, blocking her view into the room, and she’s shouting before she notices that he’s half-naked. ‘What the FUCK!’ she shouts.
It’s the first time she has heard his voice. It comes out weak and prissy, selfconsciously posh like a man who’s spent too much time explaining grammar to schoolchildren. ‘Can I help you?’ he asks.
‘Seriously? What? Can’t you hear your own fucking music?’
He recoils at the swearword. ‘Excuse me —’
‘Jesus! Have you gone deaf or something? Is that it? Turn it down! Turn it the fuck down! How can you be so fucking selfish?’
He blinks at her.
‘Have you any idea how thin these walls are?’ she demands. ‘Just because you think it’s some kind of classy music I have to share every bloody note. Just turn it the fuck down!’
He blinks again. Upstairs, she hears the creak of a door, the sound of quiet footsteps creeping along the landing. Someone come to listen, but she knows they won’t join in. Her rage builds. DI Cheyne and Tony Stott and her daft, mad, drunken mother, and that dirty old sod leering at her as he takes her rent and thinking he’s entitled to the deposit because she’s improved his property with a door lock, and everyone wanting, wanting, wanting the money she soon won’t have.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. He is sweaty, as though he’s been exercising in this heat, and his throat and chest are flushed, and his eyes are puffy and red.
She’s too inflamed to stop, now. ‘Sorry? Sorry’s if it’s just once. This is all the time. All. The. Bloody. Time.’
She stabs a finger through the air to emphasise each word. She had no idea she had this aggression in her. Maybe if she had, she wouldn’t have decided running was her best way out of her situation. ‘Do you get it? Turn it down. Turn it the fuck down, or I’ll come in and smash your fucking stereo!’
Gerard Bright just stands there and lets her stab uselessly at the air. There’s a big bruise on his upper arm; fingermarks, as though someone’s gripped him there with a vice. ‘I already have,’ he points out.
‘Oh, don’t give me that. You’ll just turn it straight back up again when I’m gone.’
Her voice rises to a shriek. My God. Where’s all this anger coming from? I’m going to hit him in a minute and I won’t be able to stop myself. ‘Do you hear me? You can hear me now, can you, now that you’ve turned that fucking noise off?’
‘We can all hear you, dear,’ says a voice behind her. ‘I should think they can hear you in Brentford.’
Collette whirls round in the narrow corridor. Vesta stands in the door under the stairs that leads to her flat, wiping her hands on a tea towel.
‘What on earth is going on?’ she asks.
Collette’s rage collapses. Suddenly she feels weak and powerless and foolish, yelling out her frustration at this man who doesn’t care. She opens her mouth to speak, and bursts into tears.
Chapter Twenty-Three
If I had a quid for every girl I’ve had in tears on this settee, thinks Vesta, I could probably have bought that caravan. It’s very strange. They’ve all got mums somewhere. I’ve heard enough about them. But it’s always me, in the end, that they come and cry to – and not just the girls, either. It breaks your heart, how sad so many people’s lives are. How many people they miss, how far they feel from home. You’d have thought we’d have organised it all better, somehow.
Collette is crying her eyes out. Upstairs, she hears Gerard Bright’s door go and his footsteps walk along the hall to the front door. She glances up through the window when it closes and sees his legs come down the steps. Such a strange man. In and out with that briefcase every afternoon and every other weekend going off to sit in McDonald’s with his kids, or wherever it is they go these days, and the rest of the time he’s locked up in that room like a hermit. Barely meets your eye if you meet him in the hall, and I could swear that half the time he looks like he’s been crying, though maybe that’s just his colouring. It’s pitiful, really. So much loneliness in the world, and it’s not like most of them started off meaning it to be that way. A few small slips, a moment of forgetfulness, and before they know it they’re all on their own.
She sits quietly on the sofa and waits for Collette to compose herself. Doesn’t know her well enough to give her a hug, feels awkward doing the Dot Cotton arm pat you see on the telly. So she sits, and waits, and hands her a new tissue from time to time. I’ll give her a cup of tea in a bit. Tea always helps, though from the look of her she might prefer a large brandy.
Crying fits never last for long if you let them play out and don’t add fuel to the flames. It’s an unnatural way to be; too much strain to sustain. Collette sobs for three minutes after Vesta’s helped her down the stairs and got her settled, then her breathing slows and she starts to make those tired little ‘oh’ sounds that precede the onset of calm. She sniffs through her blocked nose, blows it on a crumpled Kleenex and dabs at her crimson eyes. ‘Thank God I wasn’t wearing make-up,’ she says. Then: ‘Sorry. Sorry about that. I don’t know where that came from.’
Of course you do, thinks Vesta. What you mean is you want me to think you don’t know. ‘I should think you’re worn out,’ she says soothingly. ‘It’s a strain, with your mum and that.’
‘It’s this house. I think it’s this house. Don’t you feel it? It’s – oppressive. Like someone’s listening to you, like they’re watching all the time. Don’t you feel it?’
‘Can’t say I do, but I’ve lived here all my life,’ lie
s Vesta. ‘If it is, I’ve got so used to it I don’t notice.’
But there is, she thinks. There is someone watching me, I’m sure of it. That door didn’t get open by itself. Not twice. I don’t feel safe here any more. But I can’t talk about it. I can’t. I can’t even think about it too closely. Because I don’t have choices. There’s nowhere else I can go.
‘He just – I’ve been having trouble sleeping at night, and then, you know, I think maybe I can get a nap, and he starts up again and it’s…’
‘I know,’ says Vesta. ‘But at least it’s not that boom-bada-boom-bada stuff the young boys are into these days, eh?’
‘What’s his deal, anyway? What’s he doing, locked up in there all day?’
‘I have no idea,’ says Vesta.
‘You don’t wonder?’
‘One of the tricks to living in a place like this is not wondering too much, unless someone wants to tell you.’
‘Really?’
‘Come on, love,’ she says. ‘We all deserve a bit of privacy. You wouldn’t want everyone asking where you’ve come from, would you?’
Collette looks startled. He eyes widen and she almost jumps off the sofa. Hah, thinks Vesta. Thought so. There’s more to your story than just an ailing mum, isn’t there? Honestly: it’s the House of Secrets, this.
Collette blushes, flusters her way through an apology. ‘No, no, I didn’t mean…’
‘It’s all right,’ Vesta smiles, and finally lays her hand on her arm. ‘I was just joking.’
Suddenly, Collette’s words come out in a rush, as though she’s been storing them up for a very long time. ‘It’s just – I… stress. Yes, that’s what it is. Stress. I just can’t… people just won’t leave you alone, will they? I thought if I left, if I just made myself scarce, they’d all forget about me and I could just get some peace, but it’s like… I don’t know. I feel like I’m under siege. All the time. It’s like the walls are pressing in on me. And this house, where I don’t know anyone, I feel like everyone’s looking at me… like they’re… you know…’
‘I wouldn’t worry about them,’ says Vesta. ‘They’re far too caught up in their own troubles. What was it? You don’t have to tell me, but frankly you look like you want to tell someone. Debt?’
Another laugh, hard, sardonic, and another nose-blow. ‘No. Not debt.’
‘It’s all right, you know, Collette. You’re hardly the first person who’s used this place as a refuge. Probably won’t be the last, either.’
Collette plucks at her tissue, stares round the room. Takes in the old-lady décor, the framed photos faded to sepia, the china dogs Vesta managed to glue back together, the whatnot with the spider plant, the net curtains that block out the light. She’s trying to make a judgement. Decide whether Vesta is trustworthy. Then she sighs and clears her throat.
‘I’m in trouble,’ she says, ‘and I don’t know what to do.’
It’s never occurred to her that she could actually just tell someone. So many things stop you. The fear of shame, the fear that they’ll be a spy, simple force of habit. Right from when she was a kid. Janine drummed it into her. Don’t tell people. Don’t talk to those nosy teachers. Too many do-gooders wanting to take you away. They’ll take you away. You want to get me into trouble, is that it? Janine trained her, and life since then has sunk the training in. But she’s tired. Exhausted by living her life in secret and bearing her burdens alone.
She’s surprised by how easily it comes out. She has no idea why she trusts this woman. She’s not really that different from all the other people she doesn’t trust. Steel grey, sensible, hair and elasticated trousers and wrinkles round the mouth, like she’s been pursing her lips all her life. Like someone’s granny. Though grannies, in Collette’s book, are women who throw their pregnant daughters on to the street.
Vesta’s eyes widen a few times as she talks, but she doesn’t panic, doesn’t throw her out and, most of all, doesn’t disbelieve her.
‘Crikey,’ she says, when her story is finished. ‘I should think you could do with a drink. I know I could!’
She gets up and opens the little cupboard under the television. Brings out a bottle of brandy – the sort Collette used to use for cooking back when she was Lisa on the way up – and two old cut-class snifters. Pours two generous measures and brings them back to the sofa.
Collette waits for her to say something. She’s all talked out. Too tired to try to argue her case, if there’s an argument to be had.
‘And it’s three years?’
She nods.
‘And how do you know they’re still looking for you?’
‘Because people like that don’t ever stop,’ she says, simply, and knows it’s true. ‘And the phone calls. He’s toying with me. Enjoying it. If I’d put my hands up and taken what was coming to me there and then, there might have been a chance, maybe…’
‘I doubt it,’ says Vesta. ‘When people get caught up in these sorts of things, it doesn’t usually end well for them. I lived through the sixties, love. I know. They’re not cheeky-chappie loves-his-old-mum types, these people, whatever they like to say.’
‘I thought if I… you know, disappeared… you know, when I saw Malik outside my flat… He actually got there before I did. Christ knows how. And it’s not just the witness thing, is it? It’s the money. I can’t believe I took it. I sort of forgot I had it till I suddenly noticed it on the passenger seat of the car. And then it was too late. I wasn’t going to go back, was I?’
‘No, no, I can see that. But yes. And really, the police…?’
Collette shakes her head, vehemently. ‘There were police in that club all the time. Getting free drinks. Backslapping. I know, because I was the one who had to make sure the drinks kept coming. I don’t think I’d last a week, if I handed myself in. I might as well just turn up at Tony’s house direct. That DI Cheyne – she’s no bloody idea.’ Collette drinks a large gulp of brandy. It burns, but it’s good. ‘What I don’t get is how they’ve been getting the numbers. It must be the home. It has to be. I’ve only given it to them. I mean, I always gave it to Janine, in case, you know… but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t have.’
‘Well,’ says Vesta, ‘the police have been getting hold of it, and frankly, if the police know something then everyone in the country can find it out for a couple of bob. But that man Stott clearly doesn’t know where you are and nor do the police.’
‘So do you think I should…?’
‘No. Oh, no, no, no!’
She’s surprised. Vesta has struck her as a backbone-of-society type until today. The sort of person who thinks it’s her duty to vote, who always trusts the authorities, no matter how many times they let her down. ‘I’ve seen far too many of my neighbours’ kids get sent down on stop-and-searches to think that,’ she says. ‘The police are just as dodgy as anybody else. Just as many prejudices, same proportion of people only out for themselves, probably more, maybe. It takes a certain type of person to want to be a copper in the first place. You don’t want to be a copper if you don’t want to tell other people what to do, do you? Only they’ve got power. Actual power, not made-up power, and everybody wants to think they’re on the side of the angels, so it’s really hard to persuade them that they’re not. I’d be very careful of the police. The law’s not set up for people like us.’
People like us? Funny how all those years I thought I was working my way up the ladder to be People Like Them. ‘So what should I do?’
Vesta bites the inside of her lip. ‘Search me,’ she says. ‘I could ask Hossein, if you like. He knows everything.’
‘No! God, no! Are you kidding?’
Vesta pats her arm. ‘Okay. It’s okay. It’s just… you know he had to leave home in a hurry himself, don’t you? He knows a lot about a lot of things. He’s been dodging the Iranian secret service for years.’
‘No,’ she says, again. ‘No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you. It was wrong of me. You don’t need to get caught up in
this.’
‘Well, I am, now,’ says Vesta. ‘Not much we can do about that. We’ll have to think. I daresay you’re reasonably safe here for the time being. Presumably he’s got you paying cash so he doesn’t have to make a record, isn’t he?’
Collette is not sure who she means for a moment, then realises that she means the Landlord. She nods. ‘Yes.’
‘Well…’ Vesta sips at her brandy and stares at the door. ‘For what it’s worth, I think you’re doing the right thing. By your mum. It’s the right thing, poor soul. We’ll see you through that, and then you can decide what happens next.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Down at the bottom of the garden, there’s a shed. As far as he knows, no one has been in it for thirty years. It’s built of the same concrete sleepers as the railway line – sleepers that were probably originally intended for the railway line, for all he knows – strapped together with metal bands, and topped with a roof of corrugated asbestos. He knows it’s asbestos, because someone, a long time ago, if the fading of the letters and the advance of the lichen across it are anything to go by, has printed off and laminated a sign that reads DANGER NO ENTRY ASBESTOS and thumbtacked it to the door. It works beautifully. None of the other tenants, not even Vesta, ventures more than halfway down the long garden, as though even looking at the sign will give them fatal lung disease. So only the Lover knows that, behind it, the fence has long since disintegrated and there is a straight path into no man’s land.
It’s not a big patch of land. Too small to be built on or, property being what it is in London, someone would have slapped in a block of flats at some point and called it Northbourne View or Park Vista, despite the fact that its outlook would be of the railway at the bottom of the embankment, and the line of scrubby sycamores that mark the edge of the common on the other side. There are fifteen feet between the bottom of the garden and the bindweed-twined chain link that demarcates railway property, and this patch of lost land runs the length of Beulah Grove, home to brambles and buddleia and ragwort and a family of urban foxes. It’s his own secret garden, his private domain.