‘What do you mean?’
He pauses, gives the impression that he’s choosing his words with special care. Then he moves fractionally closer, a little gesture of discretion, though there is clearly no one to overhear us. ‘You should know that Mrs Roper has been very honest with us. She understands we need the full picture if we’re going to find her husband. Holding back important information only wastes time and you’re probably aware that in a missing-persons investigation you really don’t want to waste time.’
‘Oh. Right. Okay.’ My tone is as wary as my gaze.
‘You mentioned Mr Roper might have continued drinking at this bar, Mariners, and possibly gone home with a woman other than his wife. Assuming this was the case, is it possible he might have done it as some sort of tit for tat?’
Inside my cuffs, my fingers clench. ‘Tit for tat? You mean towards Melia?’ Unexpectedly flooded with shame, I meet his eye. ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose it might be that.’
‘So you and Mrs Roper . . .’
‘Please, can we just call her Melia.’
‘You and Melia,’ he says, agreeably. And he angles his head as if to appraise me afresh, to assess whether I’m plausibly appealing enough for a woman of her calibre. There’s a flicker in his gaze and I imagine him thinking, Yes, I can just about see it.
‘When exactly did you start sleeping together?’ he asks.
8
March 2019
I’m really attracted to you, Jamie . . .
It was so simple a seduction, so direct. My response? So predictable. Frankly, I never expected to hear words like these from my long-term mate, much less from a wildly attractive younger woman.
We’d known each other six weeks or so by then and were together once more as a four, this time at Kit and Melia’s place on Tiding Street. Just before it could start to be conspicuous by its absence, a dinner invitation had come for a Saturday night in March.
They’d spoken of their flat as a hovel, but it was no different from the first flats of my own youth, albeit at a vastly inflated rent (Clare knew the going rate off the top of her head: eighteen hundred a month). The difference was that I’d been quite content with such accommodation at their age; I’d scarcely given it a thought from one month to the next.
The sitting room was dominated by an acid-yellow velvet sofa, a raft of vivid colour in the ocean of rental neutrals. Whatever had been at the window had been torn down, an exhibitionist move on their part in a street this narrow or perhaps simply an act of negligence by their landlord. Other than the flowers we’d brought – purple tulips, with some sort of foliage that smelled of the woods – a framed Spanish poster for the movie Niagara was the only decoration, its star pictured lips parted, mid-protest.
‘Who’s the Marilyn fan?’ I asked.
‘Who isn’t the Marilyn fan?’ Melia said. She wore a zipped floral jumpsuit of mauve and buttercup-yellow and high cork-soled platforms that would have looked ludicrous on anyone else but on her looked, well, ravishing. ‘Kit bought me that for Christmas,’ she added.
Vintage posters were not cheap, I thought.
There were few personal items in evidence. Clare and I had dozens of photographs and spent a fortune on frames, but our hosts had only one (I supposed their memories were mostly digital). It was of a group of actors in front of a plantation house set, a baby-faced Melia, dressed in a slip dress, identifiable in the centre.
‘Was this your fifteen minutes of fame?’ I asked her.
‘Sure was. Guess the play.’
‘It’s got to be Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?’
‘Very good! I played Maggie. Rich but unfulfilled.’ Adopting a sultry Southern accent, she added, ‘I should be so lucky.’
‘You pull off the Liz Taylor styling pretty well.’
‘Thank you. Sadly, we didn’t get to keep the costumes.’ Her gaze lingered, and I suppose mine must have too for me to know hers had.
I scanned the other faces in the photo. ‘Have any of these guys made it big?’
She moved to my side so we were shoulder to shoulder and I felt electrified by the touch of her arm against mine. ‘Freya’s understudying at the Gielgud at the moment. Oh, this guy, Rollo, he’s touring in the Far East with a great company. The problem is, you get a gig like that and then it ends and you’re back to square one. Back to bar work to pay the rent.’
‘I’ve done it the wrong way round,’ I quipped. ‘Maybe now I’ve got the café job, I need to become an actor?’
Melia cocked her head. ‘I actually think you’d be good, Jamie.’
‘Based on what?’ Clare asked her, laughing. I hadn’t realized she’d been listening. ‘I can always tell when he’s lying.’
‘There must be a slight difference between acting and lying,’ I pointed out. ‘Otherwise half the population would be auditioning for the RSC.’
Melia repeated the remark as if committing it to memory. In her own home, there was a subtle difference to her manner. She was more adult, challenging, even a little intimidating, as if she were in the one place where life worked on her terms instead of other people’s.
We chatted about my career counselling – ‘I’m going to be master of my own narrative’ – and when I next looked I saw that Kit had Melia’s cast photo on his knee and was dividing a small pile of powder into lines, vertical arrows through the bodies of each of the figures. I glanced at Clare, knowing I would need to take her lead, which was almost certainly to abstain since we hadn’t done drugs in years. But when Kit passed it to her, she peered at faces in the photograph and laughed.
‘I need to know who I’m abusing here.’
‘Go for Si, on the right,’ Kit said. ‘He works in Harrods in small electricals now. He was the one we all thought would make it, as well.’
‘You get Melia,’ Kit told me, indicating the line running up the centre of her skimpily costumed figure.
I could tell the coke was finer quality than in the old days. I felt instantly, shockingly pleased with myself, a sentiment reflected in the dilated gazes of the others in the room. God knows how much time was spent finding one another fascinating before Clare said, ‘Are we actually eating this evening?’
‘Oh, yeah, there’s stuff in the oven,’ Melia said, as if she’d forgotten quite what.
‘I can check for you,’ I said. ‘I need to get some water.’
I congratulated myself on the water, which I felt showed a level of self-preservation.
‘Grab another bottle of red from the rack, will you?’ Kit said.
The layout of the flat was from the original conversion, the galley kitchen at the back, next to the bathroom. Its sash window was half open, and in a neighbouring garden a dog barked and was loudly shushed by its owner.
Having filled the water jug and picked up the wine, I turned to find that Melia had arrived in the narrow space and was standing with her back to the door, blocking my exit. I smiled, wine bottle in one hand and jug in the other. ‘Any particular reason you’re barring my way?’
‘I just wanted you to myself for a minute.’
‘That’s nice,’ I said, uncertainly.
‘It is nice.’ She took a step towards me, her platforms soft on the tile, and added, in case I’d misunderstood, ‘I’m really attracted to you, Jamie.’
Well. Without the chemical boost, I’d have assumed I was being pranked; even with it, I thought this was not a declaration to be taken at face value, though she’d inched so close I could feel her breath. Was this some pre-arranged wife-swapping proposal? But hearing Kit and Clare in the living room arguing about Brexit, I thought not.
‘You don’t believe me, do you? Why would I lie?’ She gave a smoky sigh. ‘I’m going to have to show you.’
With both hands full, I was completely exposed to her wraithlike embrace, arms snaking around my chest, her fingers moving over the back of my neck, small high breasts compressed between our ribcages. Her confidence was audacious, even insulting, and in my mind I pictured myself sh
aking her from me, asking her what the hell she thought she was doing. In reality, however, I was kissing her, responding to the pressure of her instinctually, mindlessly. Occasionally the silky fabric of her jumpsuit would touch my bare skin, its frictionless contact wildly erotic.
I have no idea how long this went on for – thirty seconds, perhaps even a minute – but we came to only when we heard Kit’s voice from the other side of the door. ‘Me? Can you bring another bottle of white, as well?’
Melia detached from me as efficiently as she’d attached herself. ‘No problem, babe,’ she called.
There was the roar of the extractor fan as the bathroom light was turned on and then the sound of the door closing. In a few deft moves, she swiped a bottle from the fridge, eased the red from my hand, and swivelled, hooking the door open with her foot. Left alone with the water jug, my sleeve drenched from the motions of our clinch, I could only wonder if what I’d just experienced had been a quantum leap with consequences for all four of us or the opposite: ephemeral, weightless, a sweet suburban lapse never to be mentioned again and remembered in old age with fond nostalgia.
Back with the others, gender lines prevailed, Melia plunging instantly into some deep heart-to-heart with Clare while Kit and I co-DJed. The food, unchecked, had to be abandoned and a takeaway ordered.
*
‘I think we overdid it last night,’ Clare groaned, delivering tea and paracetamol to the bedside the next morning. No longer morning, in fact, I saw, nudging my phone from under the pillow and seeing the time. Sitting back on her pillows beside me, she looked like I felt: destroyed. ‘Good to remind ourselves why we don’t do drugs. They’re too old for it, let alone us! Never again.’
Struggling upright, I ignored the white streaks in my vision and downed the tea while she googled a story about a middle-aged couple going to bed after a cocaine binge and not waking up again. In the cold light of day it struck me as extraordinary that in these straitlaced times Melia should have done drugs in front of a work superior. But, then, that wasn’t the only line she had crossed so incautiously last night – my memory functioned well enough for me to be clear that it had been she who initiated our kiss. What had I been thinking, kissing her back like that?
I hadn’t been thinking, that was the problem.
‘Who’s this Steve bloke Melia told me about?’ Clare asked, cradling her mug. With her head lowered, the shadows under her eyes were dark, ghoulish.
‘He’s a friend from the boat. I don’t think she’s met him, has she?’
‘No. What’s he like?’
‘He’s okay. A bit full of himself.’
‘Everyone’s full of themselves these days. Where did all the shrinking violets and wallflowers go?’ Clare groaned. ‘Anyway, Melia’s very suspicious of him. I wondered if you two had words about him in the kitchen.’
I made a sound in my throat like a blocked pipe. ‘No, not at all. Why?’
‘Just that when you came back, she went on and on about him, how he’s a bad influence on Kit, that kind of thing.’
‘Maybe he is,’ I said.
‘Yeah, or maybe Kit is.’ Draining the last of her tea, she set the mug on the bedside cabinet and sank lower into the bed. ‘I imagine she’ll be fine once she meets the guy and his tongue is hanging out like every other man she’s ever encountered.’
‘I’m sure you’re right.’ Though confident there was no insinuation in her comment, I turned onto my front and buried my face in the pillow. There was nothing for it but to sleep off my shame.
9
March 2019
It was a relief on Monday morning when Kit made no move to lure me onto the deck and bundle me overboard. Evidently, he knew nothing about what had taken place in his kitchen. In any case, rain was lashing down and the deck was closed. The buildings at ground level were slick from the downpour, their tops obscured by low cloud. Umbrellas, mostly black, formed jagged walkways of shelter.
‘Saturday night, mate,’ he said by way of a greeting. As tradition dictated, Clare had sent the thank-you text, not me, and would slip a card through their letterbox later, even though either of us could have handed it over directly. Those Edinburgh manners prevailed.
I pulled a classic lads’ expression: sheepish, but unrepentant. ‘Can I give you some cash for, you know?’
‘No, you’re all right. Just being good hosts.’
Free drugs and a grope of his girlfriend – or, more precisely, a groping from her. Remembering my hands-free helplessness, I felt a surge of desire, turned my head from Kit and pulled myself up from the seat. ‘Let me at least get the coffees.’
‘Great. Oh, get me a pastry as well, will you? Didn’t have time for breakfast.’
There was a queue at the bar and by the time I returned, we’d reached the peninsula and Steve had joined us. As they discussed the weekend’s football scores, Kit tore at his pastry as if he hadn’t eaten for days. Everything he consumed, he consumed so vigorously.
‘You’re quiet today, Jamie,’ Steve remarked. ‘Having a bit of a Zen moment, are you, before you clock in at the Cabinet Office?’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ It hadn’t taken me long to recognize him as one of those people skilled at making a sneer sound like a bit of harmless fun. I turned from their cackling to look at the river.
By the time I got to work, I’d dismissed Saturday’s canoodle as an isolated incident (how could a woman as beautiful as Melia possibly fancy a man who used words like ‘canoodle’ unironically?). Even so, the subconscious is a powerful thing and I found myself humming that old Special AKA song, ‘What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend’. I played it to Regan – she’d never heard of the Specials – and started thinking it might be one of my Desert Island Discs (I didn’t dare ask her if she’d heard of Desert Island Discs. Or just discs).
Then, mid-morning, a text came:
Enjoyed Sat. Want to meet just U & me?
I stared at it for some time before replying, Is this you, Melia? and breathing in painful snatched gulps until the next text appeared:
How many of us R there? Yes, M. Thurs 7.30?
I began typing, I’m flattered, but, and found myself pausing. I can’t claim that events ran away with me, that I was swept along like some hapless antihero, because I actively stopped mid-composition and considered my answer from a bigger-picture perspective. Even a long-lived life is tragically short – would I ever get an offer like this again?
I hit the delete key, tapping away at that little cross, and then typed:
Yes. Where?
Simple as that. As treacherous and opportunistic and – I would like to think – uncharacteristic as that. Never mind that I’d be sitting side by side with her boyfriend every morning between now and then in a seat paid for by my partner, never mind that Melia worked with that partner and was several ranks her junior. I was a cad, a heel, and other terms Kit and Melia would never have heard of. She was whatever passed in millennial vernacular for the female equivalent.
Her message came back with an emoji I’d never used before but that I guessed meant ‘my lips are sealed’:
Goody. I’ll send address deets.
*
It was easy enough on the evening in question to tell Kit I was getting the usual boat and then deliberately miss it to get the one after. Even in minimum-wage work – especially in minimum-wage work – you got held up, and so he took the 17.55 and I the 18.25.
I was meeting Melia after her final appointment of the day. The flat was on the twelfth floor of a new development on the east side of the peninsula, with a view downriver towards City Airport. It was dusk, the lights of the planes piercing the smog.
She was already there, waiting for me as the lift doors parted and kissing me boldly on the mouth before singing hello. Her hair was loose, little flicks of auburn at the ends that I hadn’t noticed before. She wore close-fitting black trousers and a rose-pink silk blouse.
I followed her high-heeled steps down a narrow, carpeted
corridor and through the door of a low-lit corner apartment. Unlike in the movies, we didn’t fall wordlessly on each other the moment the door closed behind us, but instead acted as if we were the first to arrive at a gathering of many. I unscrewed the bottle of wine I’d picked up, filled the takeout coffee cups brought from work, and made a little circuit of the open-plan living space. The windows had those gauzy white drapes you find in beach hotels in Bali, the furniture black and sleek. On every sofa and chair there was a complex scheme of throws and cushions, unlit candles in porcelain pots on the low central table, even a photography book open on a spread of a rooftop pool. It had obviously been professionally staged, a notion I’d always found ridiculous when Clare mentioned it, but entirely appropriate for this, a drama with adult scenes, a running time of, what, an hour? Ninety minutes? ‘Who owns this place?’ Had Melia misused work properties before or had I sown the seed in that jesting exchange at the food hall?
‘A buy-to-let investor,’ she said. ‘She’s never lived here herself. I’m not sure she’s ever set foot in the place.’
‘And I assume she has no idea you’re using it for your extramarital assignations?’
Her lips pressed together in amusement. ‘I’m not married, Jamie.’
And nor was I. ‘Extracurricular then.’
‘And only one assignation. We won’t come here next time.’ She watched for my reaction to this casual assumption that we would continue in subsequent locations, and nerves flurried in my stomach.
Nothing has happened yet. You could still walk away.
‘Come and see the bedroom.’
I tailed her to a lamplit box of fashionable charcoal hues, as pristinely arranged as the rest of the place. Whereas the living room had a deep balcony beyond its walls, the bedroom window was a single-pane cliff face of glass.
‘You don’t have a fear of heights as well, do you?’ she said.
‘As well?’ I laughed. ‘You see me as completely maladjusted, don’t you?’
‘Maladjusted, that’s a great word. But no, of course I don’t. We’re all maladjusted in some way. We all have The Fear.’ She held out her hand to me, palm down and fingers outstretched, almost as if she expected me to kiss her hand. Wild impulses sparked.
The Other Passenger Page 6