Tabby did not understand. ‘I was so incredibly tired, I didn’t know what to do, and when I heard the entry code —’
‘What do you mean, you heard the code? You were watching me, then?’
Tabby disregarded the suspicion that they were talking at cross purposes: after all, they hardly had a common one. ‘No, I mean I saw you key in the code, and you said it out loud as well. I haven’t got any money and I needed somewhere to sleep, so I let myself in —’
The woman interrupted once more: ‘Are you completely mad? You can’t just overhear codes and let yourself in! This is a private home, not some sort of doss house!’
‘I know, it was wrong. I’m really sorry.’ How inadequate the words sounded: insultingly so, as if she were not respectful enough to try harder.
‘This is unbelievable, it’s breaking and entering. I’m going to phone the police.’
‘Don’t do that, please. I was going to leave as soon as I woke up, I promise. I wasn’t going to steal anything, honestly.’
‘“Honestly”?’
Tabby sensed a paralysis in the other woman that gave her her first hope, perhaps even a momentary advantage: if she made a dash for it she might outrun her discoverer. Her legs now free from the bedding, she began to slip from the woman’s grasp, heading through the open door and towards the stairs, but she was quickly pursued, footsteps menacing on the wooden stairs behind her. Emerging into the main room, Tabby stumbled and felt a twist in her left knee, at the same time remembering her backpack, still upstairs, at the foot of the bed. She knew she couldn’t leave it behind and turned in surrender. Trying her knee, the pain caused her to crumple to the floor and before she could compose herself she’d succumbed to whimpering into her hands. ‘Please, just let me go. I promise you’ll never see me again…’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, look at you!’ the woman cried, her voice hardly more controlled than Tabby’s own. Indeed, she could not continue for a moment or two, breathing hard as she calmed herself. ‘Why don’t you get up from the floor and sit on the sofa. I’ll make you a drink. You obviously need a few minutes to get yourself together.’
‘It’s too late for that,’ Tabby sobbed. ‘I might as well just throw myself off the bridge and be done with it.’
The woman stared at her, at a loss. ‘I’ll make some tea,’ she said finally. Only when she turned her back did Tabby rise to her feet and limp to the sofa.
The kettle seemed to take a long time to boil, long enough for Tabby’s tears to subside, leaving her too desperate to feel any embarrassment. She became aware of the other woman’s scrutiny and then of its removal as the water was poured, the fridge door being opened and closed. Neither spoke, but it was not hard to guess the other’s thoughts. She’d had the fright of her life – to find a stranger, an adult female, in your home! It was a miracle she had not turned and fled the moment she saw her, returning only with a pair of police officers. (Tabby had seen the police booth next to the car park in the port, no more than two minutes away.) What would she have done in such a situation? But the notion of being the home owner, the occupier, was so heartbreakingly foreign she could not answer the question. She thought, inevitably, of Paul, not in accusation of his having caused her to fall so low, but in hope of him coming to raise her again. Rescue her.
She had never felt more pathetic in her life.
‘Right, here we go. How’s the leg?’
Tabby looked up in confusion, for the woman’s tone had altered completely. It was gentle and soothing; kind. Not only that, but as she approached the sitting area, bearing a tray with tea things, Tabby saw that her whole demeanour had changed: her shoulders were lowered and her facial muscles relaxed. Though she couldn’t say why, Tabby understood that this could not be the product of a natural draining of fear and adrenalin, but had to be something more deliberate. It was as if, in the time it had taken the kettle to boil, the woman had reinterpreted her own part in this unscheduled drama and committed herself to a different, less likely role.
‘I think it’ll be OK,’ Tabby said. ‘It’s just my knee, I’ve twisted it slightly.’
The woman placed the tray on the coffee table and handed her one of the mugs. ‘Drink this and let’s get to the bottom of what just happened here.’ She settled herself on the sofa opposite Tabby, her movements loose and easy. There was a trace of humour in her eyes, a reversal of mood confirmed by her next question: ‘So what’s your name? I assume it’s not Goldilocks?’
Tabby paused. If she gave her real name, she could still be reported at any time, and perhaps this was the thinking behind this change of approach. There might even be a sedative in the tea! With nothing to guide her but her gut instinct, she made the decision that this was no trick, no trap, but a chance.
Raising the mug to her lips, she smelled the warm, woody aroma of the tea and said, ‘No, it’s Tabitha. Tabby.’
‘Well, Tabby,’ the woman said. ‘I’m Emmie.’
Chapter 2
Emily
London, December 2010
It was 12 December 2010 when I met Arthur Woodhall, and I honestly believe that until that date I had not been properly activated. I had not yet become myself. I was thirty years old and, extraordinary as it may sound now, given all that’s happened since, I’d made little impression on the world. True, people often said I had an attractive face, but I’d come to learn that it never quite seemed to fit. People said I had a big heart, but I’d reached the conclusion that it might never be able to tolerate its own capacity.
I suppose what I mean is I’d never been happy before.
It was a Saturday and the occasion was the Christmas party of our neighbours, the Laings of number 197, a bash they were giving for the Friends’ Association of Walnut Grove. Such events, I was told that night, were held in rotation by certain members, mostly those owning the bigger houses on the street, houses worthy of opening up and showing off. Though Matt and I were not Friends, we were invited because the bedroom of our new rental flat at 199 adjoined a portion of the sitting room of 197 and it was thought the music might disturb us. The Laings did not want to risk being remembered as the ones who hosted the year someone called the police about the noise.
‘They don’t expect us to actually turn up,’ Matt said. It was he who had answered the door when Sarah Laing called round and he had described her to me as ‘posh and bossy’. ‘They’re just covering themselves in case it all kicks off. Let’s go to the pub instead.’
‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s see how the other half live. Think of the free booze.’
Finances being painful and Matt an uncomplicated sort, this was all the enticement he needed. I bullied him into the shower while I dried my hair and did my make-up in the Fifties style I liked: dark brows, curled eyelashes and liquid liner, soft and dewy pink lips. Then I costumed myself in a dark red silk dress I’d found in the vintage shop near work. The style was off-the-shoulder and the skin of my chest and shoulders glowed white in the bedroom mirror – I felt like a strawberry dipped in cream.
‘That’s a bit revealing,’ Matt said, with neither approval nor disapproval – with little sense of relevance to him whatever, in fact. After five years of steadily decreasing sexual attraction between us, we were flatmates, not lovers, our recent signing of a new lease together an act of apathy, like failing to switch from an underperforming bank or a negligent GP. Better the devil you know. We were friends who shared a bedroom because we could not afford one each. And we were friends, I want to be clear on that. We may have stopped sleeping together, but we had not stopped liking each other.
As we walked down our front path and up the Laings’, I felt ashamed of the contrast on behalf of our landlord. While our garden was a horror of neglect – dirty bins with the flat numbers daubed on them in yellow paint, the dead remains of lavender in borders rife with weeds – theirs was artfully stocked and professionally maintained, dustbins out of sight in a timber pen painted some heritage shade of green and at the
door two potted firs encrusted with fairy lights. More Christmas lights blinked at the first-floor window, where beyond the ceiling-skimming tree the party was taking place, and the contained boom of conversation behind the glass quickened my blood a little. I know now that while Matt genuinely doubted the value of the entertainment on offer that night, I had different motives. Though I liked to believe I opposed all that the Friends stood for, I secretly craved membership of their elite society. To possess one of these narrow black Georgian houses with their rows of high sash windows, to own a piece of a street scouted frequently by the makers of period drama, to have a marriage, a social life – a Christmas party! – like that of Marcus and Sarah Laing: what a declaration it made to the world that you were someone.
After an unnerving delay, the door was answered by a short, muscularly built man I guessed must be Marcus. Though losing his hair, he was youthful for his age, which I judged to be about fifty, and bounced on the balls of his feet with enthusiasm. ‘How nice, some young blood at last!’ he cried, speaking over the rush of party sounds in the tones of a pantomime actor. His wife, materialising on the crowded stairs behind him, was younger by five years or so and not quite tall enough to carry off the flowing, full-length dress she wore – I feared a tripping as she approached. But she arrived smoothly enough, a cold smile cast in my direction. She greeted only Matt, seizing him from my side as if agreed in advance, and the two of them vanished into the throng without a backward glance. I was left feeling as if my bag had just been snatched from my hands.
‘Right, alcohol,’ Marcus shouted into my ear, ‘give me one second,’ and he promptly disappeared into one of the ground-floor rooms. I worried he’d never come back, was just contemplating turning on my heel and fleeing home when he was by my side once more, pressing a glass of champagne on me and proposing to lead me upstairs for introductions. Already I could think of nothing to say; for the first time in weeks, I craved a cigarette.
In the sitting room, the furniture had been moved to the edges of the room to make way for the central mob of Walnut Grovers, the space above their heads dominated by an enormous chandelier that hung white and motionless, like a fountain frozen at the point of eruption. I could not see Matt. Surveying the crush, Marcus turned to me with a mock-helpless expression, before spotting a group of middle-aged men near the window at the back and launching me towards them.
‘A treat for the menfolk!’ he announced, to my embarrassment. ‘Meet our new neighbour Emma!’
‘Emily,’ I corrected him, blushing under my make-up.
‘Emily, forgive me. Sarah must have misheard.’
He stayed to supervise the introductions, standing very close to me and making me excruciatingly conscious of my cleavage (what had I been thinking, choosing this dress? It was so burlesque). There were three other men in the little cluster, each of whom emitted the body heat of one who’d been drinking for some time.
‘What do you all do?’ I asked, shyness making my voice too bright.
Marcus was a City solicitor, Arthur a consultant at the nearby hospital, Ed a journalist, and the last, whose name proved one too many to remember, a voiceover actor whose voice I did not recognise. I’d been told by the rental agent about the vibrant mix on the street, which was close enough to the hospital to attract senior staff, costly enough to interest City lawyers and bankers, and romantic enough to draw the artistic type. (As a web developer for a bike retailer and a glorified shop assistant, Matt and I scarcely qualified for the final category.)
All the men were in their forties or fifties, which validated Marcus’s opening claims of my relative youth. Though I’d seen a handful of teenagers on the stairs and noticed one or two small children in the doorway now and then, presumably visiting from a more diverting zone elsewhere, I could find no one else here in their twenties or thirties. The music was from the decade of my birth.
‘Are you a Friend?’ the voiceover actor asked me, a little doubtfully.
I swallowed. ‘Well, we haven’t joined the association or anything, no, but we live next door. We just moved in a few weeks ago. Flat B.’ There were still times when I clung to the plural of Matt and me, and this was one of those times.
‘Flat B,’ the guy repeated, as if sharing a joke with the group, ‘we’ll have to remember that.’
His neighbour, Ed, sniggered. ‘What, next time you lose your keys and need a bed for the night, try Flat B?’
‘I can’t think what you mean,’ I said, smiling. ‘Besides, it would be a tight squeeze: there’s my boyfriend as well.’
‘There are some on this street who’d say that made it even better,’ Ed said, chortling. The instantly risqué turn to the conversation could only be explained by the speed with which they were all guzzling the Laings’ champagne. It was high-quality stuff, creamy and soft as it effervesced on my palate. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d tasted something so expensive.
‘Careful Nina doesn’t get wind of that sort of talk,’ Marcus said. ‘That’s Ed’s wife,’ he added, for my benefit. ‘She’s not someone you’d want to cross.’
I didn’t want to cross anyone, but the conversation was moving much too fast to allow me to protest.
‘Nina writes for the Press,’ the voiceover artist explained. ‘She’s claimed more scalps than the Comanches.’
I did not often read the Press, a national tabloid, and had not heard of the Comanches, but it didn’t matter because ignorance was expected of me, I saw. I’d already been judged lacking in the sphere that counted the most: connections (or perhaps money). I was only decorative, the quintessential dumb blonde; perhaps by dressing in the style of a bygone era, I attracted bygone attitudes. ‘What do you mean, scalps?’
‘You know, all the people she’s hung out to dry over the years. Ministers, actors, pop stars. Oh, that TV presenter with the red hair – she’s in the Priory now, right, Ed?’ He crowed at my blank expression. ‘The TV presenter, I mean, not Nina. Sarah’s friendly with her, isn’t she, Marcus?’
‘Not as friendly as she’d like,’ Marcus said, and given his wife’s cool reception of me I couldn’t help thrilling to this small disloyalty. Raising an eyebrow at Ed, who remained modestly silent on his wife’s behalf, Marcus sought the opinion of the only one of the men yet to contribute. ‘But Arthur’ll tell you, won’t you, mate? His wife Sylvie’s a founder member of the feared Grove coven.’
But Arthur remained aloof from the banter, absorbed in his thoughts; it wasn’t clear that he’d been following the conversation at all. Unlike the others, he did not press physically, or impress particularly. He was no taller than me in my heels, with a boyish slightness to his build and a pronounced weariness in both posture and expression. Whereas the others ogled my neckline in exactly the manner I deserved, his gaze moved only reluctantly across me, as if over a display in a shop he’d been forced to enter when he’d expressly stated a preference to wait outside.
‘I’d love to be able to write,’ I told Ed. ‘That’s my ambition. But if I did, I don’t think anyone would want to read it.’
‘That’s not a million miles away from how I feel myself,’ he replied. ‘Let’s swap jobs, eh?’
‘What do you do?’ Marcus asked me. ‘I don’t think I know.’
‘I work in the pottery café on Linley Avenue. We do children’s birthday parties, half-term classes, that sort of thing.’
But Earth, Paint & Fire was below their radar, evidently. Ed’s was the only face to clear and he was not quite fast enough to conceal his contempt: ‘Is that that place where kids paint spots on an egg cup and the parent gets charged twenty quid for the privilege?’
‘God, is that what it is? I’ve always thought someone who actually enjoys working with small children must be a bit touched,’ the voiceover artist said.
‘Oh.’ Even without their comments, mine had already sounded an insignificant way to earn a living next to their grand careers, and I thought it best to accept my inferiority with a good grace. ‘It’s n
ot for ever,’ I said, smiling. I imagined myself in a year’s time – same party, different house – but with a raised status. I’d be a trainee reporter or a novelist with a work in progress. I’d be one of them.
Marcus left us after that, and as Ed and the voiceover artist returned to the subject of Nina’s latest victim, I waited for the opportunity to make eye contact with Arthur. I felt an urgent need to redeem myself, to see something finer reflected in his eyes than the top half of my own breasts. ‘So which number are you?’ I asked him, when at last our glances intersected.
He paused, as if judging the meaning of my question from an extensive list of options. ‘Eleven. Right at the other end of the street.’ It was the first time he’d spoken since giving his name in greeting and I loved his voice instantly: it was low-pitched and earnest, a voice designed for discretion.
‘Have you lived on the Grove long?’ (This was how you referred to it, I had learned, as if there could be no other.)
The Disappearance of Emily Marr Page 3