Then I was knocking on your door and Bea was barking and you were there and I think I was so afraid of you being there and then so relieved that you were, I burst into tears.
‘Whoa,’ you said and you ran your fingers through your hair. You looked like you couldn’t believe I was really standing there on your doorstep. Then Bea came running out of the hallway barking at me, and instead of thinking how you were this very dangerous man and that this could be the last time I was ever going to see daylight, I thought how she was probably warning you that you shouldn’t let me in because I was the bad person that’d taken her and I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ only I was crying so much it just came out like massive sobs.
You put your hands out then to tell me to stop crying or calm down a bit, but I couldn’t. ‘Shush, Bea,’ you said. ‘Look who it is! It’s that nice girl that rescued you.’ You weren’t looking at her, though. You were looking over my shoulder, out at the street, one way then the other, like you were checking no one had seen me.
Then, when I kept on crying and Bea kept on barking, you stepped back, pulling the door open.
Normally, I never would’ve gone in. I’d have said, Nooo, Mr Caldwell, I am not coming into your evil lair, but right then I really didn’t care if you killed me or not. I thought how it’d actually be a bonus, a double bonus even, because if you did and then got caught because of it, I’d have saved Alice by sacrificing myself in her place, which would be even more heroic than just telling the police about you (except that no one, including Alice, would ever know that that’s what I’d done because they’d never know how all along you were really planning to kill her).
You ran your fingers through your hair again like you weren’t at all sure about me coming into your house, but then you closed the door and followed me down your hallway, touching my shoulder lightly to tell me to go into the room on the left.
It was small and dark because of the net curtain, and smoke was hanging in the air.
‘Take a pew,’ you said.
I sat on the sofa – sank into it, it was so spongy – and Bea came and stood at my feet, panting up at me, her sharp white teeth showing. I could feel your eyes on me and even though I was still blubbing like a little kid, I wished I wasn’t wearing my school uniform and had changed into something a bit nicer. I wished I’d put my jeans on with my black mohair Evans jumper that’s got a peach on the front of it.
You went out and Bea went up on her back legs in front of me and started paddling her paws in the air like she had outside Boots. Then you came back with a handful of loo roll.
I pressed it to my eyes, my chest jumping in spasms. Then, because it was making me feel pretty self-conscious with you standing there at the end of the sofa watching me, I leant forward and stroked Bea.
You said, ‘Do you want a drink? Tea?’
I nodded and you went out.
Then you were there again. ‘Or a rum and Coke?’
I said, ‘Can I just have Coke?’
Bea lay down at my feet while you were in the kitchen, her chin on her paws. I could hear you opening the fridge and cupboard doors.
‘Hello little Bea,’ I whispered. I could smell the cigarette butts from the ashtray on the floor next to the chair. There were five in there, all roll-ups, skinny and folded where you’d pressed them out. The chair was blue velvet with a bit of lace hanging over the back and the only thing in the room that wasn’t brown. The carpet was brown with swirls on it, the curtains were brown, the table and sofa were brown and the fireplace had beige tiles round it with pictures of plants growing up them. Above that, lots of little china dogs were lined up along the mantelpiece. I started to feel better. Calmer anyway, even though I was still having to catch at breaths.
You came in with a tray. Bea’s tail wagged, but she didn’t move. ‘It’s Diet Coke,’ you said, stepping over her. ‘That OK?’ And because it seemed funny asking someone as fat as me if Diet Coke was OK, I laughed. I said Diet was probably a good idea and you smiled, even though you didn’t look at me.
You pushed the tray onto a round side table next to the velvet chair, making some letters fall off. You picked them up and put them on the tray next to two wine glasses with ice in them, two cans of Diet Coke and a bottle of Captain Morgan rum that had a picture of a pirate on the label. Then you pulled a dark blue packet out of the back pocket of your jeans and sat down, putting it on the arm of the chair. It was tobacco. The packet said ‘Drum’ on it in big white letters.
Neither of us said anything while you poured Coke into the first glass. It fizzed on the ice. I looked at your skin, pale and yellowy against your dark hair, at your big muscly nose and the dimple in the middle of your chin.
You handed me the glass, then poured some rum into the other one and topped it up with Coke from the open can.
I could feel a faint breeze on my face from the bubbles popping in my glass and because I thought you might notice I was staring at you, I looked round at everything in the room again.
There was a cuckoo clock on the wall next to the chimneybreast. I hadn’t even heard it ticking till I saw it, which was crazy because it was really loud, like tock-took, tock-took. It was in the shape of a house covered in blue and red flowers, with green leaves and little birds, and every time it tock-tooked, a girl on a swing with blonde hair in a blue dress and puffy white sleeves went left, right (instead of backwards and forwards) underneath it.
‘Do you live here?’ I said.
‘Me?’ you said. You picked up the Drum and opened the flap. There was a packet of green Rizlas inside and you pulled one of the papers out. ‘No. Well, sort of. I do now.’
I nodded even though you weren’t looking at me, and watched you pull some tobacco along the Rizla with your fingertips. I’d seen roll-up butts lots of times, but I’d never seen anyone make one. You were so quick it was almost like it was making itself. It made me think of a video I saw on YouTube where someone scrunched a piece of paper up, only the film was played backwards so the paper started off in a ball and then went flat.
You put the roll-up in your lips and started rooting round in the front pocket of your jeans – the same pocket you’d had your hand in when you were watching Alice. You pulled a silver lighter out, flipped the lid back and lit the roll-up, screwing your eyes shut as you dragged on it. A thin line of smoke went up into the air, then curled out like the branches of a tree.
When you’d had a couple more drags, I said, ‘Where were you before?’
‘Oh,’ you said, ‘further north.’ You pulled a bit of tobacco off the end of your tongue and wiped it on the chair cushion.
I thought of Amelia Bell, the girl that went missing in Nottingham, and said, ‘Whereabouts?’
You glanced at me again, but only for a second. ‘Here and there,’ you said.
I nodded. Then I said, ‘I had a friend who went to live in Nottingham.’ That wasn’t true, but I wanted to see what your reaction was.
You picked the ashtray off the floor, put it on your leg and tapped the ash from your roll-up into it. Then you looked at the wall behind me. ‘I’m going to redecorate,’ you said. ‘Do it up, you know.’
I nodded, thinking, nice ‘changing of the subject’ there. I also thought how I probably looked like the Churchill dog from the telly adverts, nodding all the time, with my face all swollen from crying so much. I looked at the china dogs on the mantelpiece again.
You saw me looking, but you didn’t say anything, so I said, ‘Can I have a look?’
‘Oh, sure,’ you said, ‘have a look.’
I put my drink on the floor and had to pretend it wasn’t a major nightmare trying to get off the sofa, even though you could probably tell. Then I went over to the fireplace.
You leant forward like you might be going to get up as well, and the thought crossed my mind that these could be the last moments of my life – that in a second or two you were going to whip a rope or a shoelace or something round my neck. I still didn’t really mind, though, which was
weird. I mean I even felt OK about it, like Well, I guess that’s up to you, Mr Caldwell. You didn’t get up. You had another drag of your roll-up, tapped more ash into the ashtray, then took your glass off the tray and had a sip.
There were loads of china dogs, probably thirty or something, and all of them were like Bea. They’d been positioned so they were acting out little scenes, with one crouching forward, its bum in the air like it was about to pounce on the one next to it that was rolling on its back. It was nice thinking of Mrs E. Caldwell putting them like that so carefully. I wondered if she used to change them round so they all got to play with each other.
Some had really long silky hair and others had shorter hair more like Bea’s, and they were different colours – white, black, grey, brown – but they were all the same kind.
‘How’d your Mum die?’ I said, without really meaning to.
You swished your drink round slowly, making the ice chink, then had another sip. ‘Stroke,’ you said.
‘Oh,’ I said, then because you didn’t say anything else and because I thought you might’ve thought it was a nosy question, I said, ‘The dogs are really sweet. What are they? I mean, what’s Bea?’
‘Havanese,’ you said, still swishing your drink round and then, as if you were quoting from a trailer for a film or something, you added, ‘The little dog with a big heart.’
‘They’re so cute.’
You nodded. ‘Queen Victoria had two of them,’ you said. Then you shrugged and did that smile that makes you look sad, the skin round your eyes going crinkly like the pictures of dried-up riverbeds in my old Geography textbook. You said, ‘Mum used to tell everyone that.’
I looked at the dogs again. Then I spotted a brown one that was just like Bea. It was even up on its hind legs, with one front paw higher than the other, like it was paddling in the air. ‘That one’s her!’ I said, a bit too enthusiastically, but it was so like her. I pointed.
You stood up, putting the ashtray back on the floor and your drink on the tray, and stepped forward so you could see which one I meant. ‘Oh, yeah,’ you said. ‘I got her that one.’
‘Where from?’
‘From Harrods,’ you said.
‘Harrods?’ I had to stop myself saying it must’ve cost a hundred quid, or maybe even a thousand.
Then you reached past me and, careful not to knock over any of the other dogs, you picked it up, holding it out to put on my hand.
The base felt cold on my palm and as I stood there looking at it – at the darker streak down its back, its ginger plumy tail and tiny pink tongue hanging out on one side – I could feel you standing there. I don’t know how I mean that really. I mean, we weren’t touching or anything, but it was like my body knew your body was there, even though I was looking at China Bea and could hardly even see you out the corner of my eye. And then suddenly it was like my mind froze – like I couldn’t move, couldn’t look away from China Bea or think of anything to say, and because you didn’t move or say anything either, it was like we were stuck there together in suspended animation.
Then you had another drag of your roll-up and I did look up and even though your eyes were only on me for probably a second before they flicked away, I’ll never forget how they looked. They were so dark I couldn’t see where the pupils stopped and the colour bit began. They looked endless in the grey light of your mum’s front room – like black holes in space – and I know that sounds creepy, but they weren’t. They were nice.
You were embarrassed, I think, because you went and sat down again, pushing your roll-up into the ashtray.
I put China Bea back in her place on the mantelpiece and went and sat down too. I watched you seal up the Drum and put it on the tray with the Rizlas and the lighter. ‘Sorry for coming round like this,’ I said. ‘All upset.’
You didn’t say anything. You looked at my drink. Then you were looking at my legs. I could feel the black hairs on them prickling and wished I could cover them up or that I’d shaved them like girls my age are supposed to. I had a feeling you might be thinking about what you were going to do with me – like if you were going to let me go or keep me in your cellar or just kill me. I thought you’d kill me because what’d be the point in keeping me? You’d keep a girl like Alice, but not me. I thought you were probably wondering how you were going to get rid of my body, about how you’d have to cut it up because it’d be too heavy to carry. I wondered if I should ask you – just come out with it so there wasn’t such an awkward atmosphere – say something like, So have you decided if you’re going to kill me yet, Mr Caldwell? Obviously I didn’t, because you can’t ask that kind of thing – especially if the person you’re asking’s being kind and has just given you a Diet Coke with ice in.
You took your drink off the tray and downed it in one, even though there was more than half of it left. Then you looked at my drink again and gripped the arm of your chair, like to get up, and said, ‘Well, I’d better get on.’
I wasn’t expecting that. I’d hardly had any of my Coke – just a few sips. And I didn’t want to go. It was nice sitting there in your mum’s house with Bea lying quietly on the floor and your mum’s clock going tock-took. I said, ‘Don’t you want to know why I was crying?’
You looked a bit alarmed, probably because you’re a man and men don’t like talking about feelings, do they? So before you could say anything to stop me, I said, ‘My dad died.’
It was weird saying it out loud like that, because I never tell anyone. I don’t think anyone at school even knows my dad died. No one’s ever asked.
‘Oh,’ you said and sank back into your chair a bit. ‘That’s . . . that’s a shame.’
I knew from the way it sounded and the way you reacted that you thought Dad had only just died and not six years ago, but I liked the way you were looking at me, your dark eyebrows pinched together, your eyes shining like you understood how terrible that must be. ‘On Tuesday,’ I said and even though it wasn’t that Tuesday, telling you made it feel like it was – like it’d all only just happened.
You looked down at your empty glass.
‘I never got to say goodbye,’ I said. ‘That was the worst bit. I was at school and didn’t find out till the end of the day.’ I glanced at you to check I wasn’t saying too much and boring you, but you didn’t seem to mind. You were tracing round the rim of your glass with your finger.
Then Bea jerked her head up and this sound – this incredible sound – filled the room. It was mad. I didn’t know what was going on. It was like something from a spaceship – like singing – filling the room from inside and out at the same time.
You looked up, your finger still moving round the top of the glass and your black-hole eyes telling me . . . what . . . what . . .?
Then I realised. ‘It’s you,’ I said. ‘Is it you?’
You didn’t say anything. You just let your finger sort of slide off the glass like it was ski-jumping off or something, and the sound vanished.
‘That’s amazing!’ I said. ‘Can you do it again?’
You shrugged, smiling like it wasn’t that big of a deal, but then you reached a finger down into the melted ice at the bottom and started moving it round the rim again, looking up at me like looking at me was part of the magic, and the singing sound was back.
Bea stood up and shook her head, walking round in circles. I leant forward to pat her and when you stopped, I said, ‘She doesn’t know what’s going on.’
You smiled and did a small, silent laugh, looking down into your glass and you said, ‘Does anyone?’
Then I said, ‘Are you going to keep her?’, hating myself the second I had because you’d just said something really deep and amazing and I’d ruined it, and also because I knew it sounded like I wanted you to give Bea to me – as if that was the only reason I’d come round.
You didn’t answer straight away. You put your hand out for her, clicking your fingers softly. When she came to you, you put your hand on her head, then moved it round her ear. You
said, ‘She’s all I’ve got now.’
I told you I wasn’t allowed a dog because Gary’s allergic. Then I had to explain who Gary was, of course, and how I had to live with him because of Mum. I couldn’t say she’d married Gary after Dad died obviously, because you thought that’d only just happened, so I suppose you thought Mum and Dad had split up.
You didn’t ask about that, though. You just said it was a shame I couldn’t have a dog of my own, and then I got an incredible idea that made my heart go fast all of a sudden. I said, ‘I could take Bea for walks.’
You turned away and put your glass on the tray.
I said, ‘It’d help you out, wouldn’t it? You could get on with doing the house up and I could take Bea for walks.’ I thought about it being the weekend and said, ‘I could come tomorrow.’
You stood up. ‘I don’t know,’ you said.
‘Or Sunday?’
‘I’m a bit busy,’ you said and you picked up the tray and went out.
I had one last gulp of Coke, getting up to follow you, but by the time I got to the hallway you were there without the tray, standing in the kitchen doorway, so I went down the hall. When I got to the front door, though, I got that feeling again, like I didn’t want to leave. I turned round. I couldn’t really see your face because the light in your hallway was so dim, but I said, ‘What’s your name?’
You didn’t answer for a second. Then you said, ‘Samuel.’ You didn’t ask my name, though, so I told you. Adults usually say what a lovely name it is, but you didn’t say anything. You started smoothing your hair down at the back. I knew that’s what you were doing, even though you were only really a silhouette. Then, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and it felt a bit weird just standing there looking at you, I opened the door.
‘Actually, Yasmin,’ you said.
Things We Have in Common Page 8