He didn't look good. There was a large purple bump on his forehead and his nose was swollen, smeared across his face. One eye was flushed and bloodshot. The hand that wasn't holding the cigarette was in a sling. Adam had really done a number on him. All in all, Karel deserved credit for taking our entrance so coolly.
I walked further into the room and propped myself against the dresser. Sam came in behind me. Karel eyed up Sam in much the same way Joe had looked at me downstairs. He twitched the corners of his mouth and wrapped his lips sensually round a new roll-up.
“Want to know why we're here?” I snapped.
He dragged his attention back to me. The eyelid was flicking again.
“You tell me soon, so why I bother asking? Or maybe beat up me again, yes? For fun, maybe. For make you laugh, yes?” He turned a page and began to read his magazine.
“Karel, we're not here to beat anyone up,” Sam said patiently. “And if Harry seems edgy, you'd best forgive him. He didn't beat you up.”
“No, he watch and think is funny,” Karel said.
He'd hit a nerve. I loathe violence, whether I'm the victim or not. I rose to my own defence.
“Listen, Karel, I'm sorry he hit you, but it's done,” I spat. “And it wasn't me, and there's nothing I can do about it. For your information, he had every right to be pissed off with you—plus you were attacking us. So live with it. We're not here to trade insults.”
He sniffed haughtily and began work on his next roll-up, a fiddly job with just one hand.
“What for, then?”
“What?”
“He means, what are we here for?” Sam said.
I began to lose the plot. I don't think I'd expected it to be easy, but this was as daft as those “talks about talks” that politicians love so much. We were getting nowhere. I put my hand to my head and tried to calm down. Deep breath.
“Okay. We're here because we want to know what happened to Verity. We think you may be able to help us.” I held up a hand to prevent Karel's anticipated reply. “I'm not going to talk about the burglary. I know what I think, and I'm not changing it, but what we want to know is when you last saw her.”
Sam slipped past me and sat on the end of Karel's bed. He raised an eyebrow and his eyes livened briefly. Sam ignored this, but spoke kindly none the less. “Karel, Verity told me weeks ago that you'd split up. But when you met Harry at the flat, you told him you were her boyfriend. Now, if you were seeing her just before she fell, we really would like to know about it.”
Karel made a noncommittal gesture, a half-jiggle, half-shrug; a trickle of tobacco spilled from the end of his cigarette. He lit up, hunching towards the flame and then blowing the smoke straight at me with a satisfied sigh. I breathed as shallowly as I could.
“She was our friend, Karel,” Sam urged. “You liked her too; I know you did. We just want to understand. If you were seeing her, then maybe you can help us understand why she did it.”
“I make lie,” Karel said smugly, as if that explained everything, as if it was as natural for him as being honest. There was no hint of shame. “I go to flat, want see Verity. Maybe patch up, maybe she give some money—hey, maybe we fuck.” He spread his one good hand. “Is for weeks, no money, no fuck since Verity.” Again, as normal as going to the shops. “She not there, I go in, I wait. Then this guy come.” He measured me with his eyes, and sneered. “This guy is so important, he say I no right be there. I think, Hey, fuck off, this guy is little nobody bastard. So I say am boyfriend, he is nobody. Of sudden he is crying!”
He mimed a trembling lip and wide eyes, and then laughed at me. That made him cough; he winced at a twinge in his ribs, and I felt slightly better—but only slightly. I fidgeted. I was furious. I was embarrassed. He had been jerking my strings for a laugh. If I weren’t such a wimp, I'd have hit him. Instead, I was letting him jerk the strings all over again. I was glad he still hurt from Adam's attack. I hoped it stayed that way for a long time.
“Were you seeing her or not?” Sam was as patient as ever.
He pursed his lips and ash dribbled on to his chest. He flicked it on to the covers, squinting against the smoke.
“Not.”
“Since when?” I growled.
“Since weeks. Who cares? Ask her.” Nodding at Sam.
“Verity told me that you'd split four or five weeks ago,” Sam said.
Karel fixed his gaze on her, intently. She idly returned it.
Whatever was happening between him and Sam, I didn't like it.
“So you didn't arrange to see her last Wednesday?” I asked sharply.
“Naaaah,” he replied, still leering at Sam. She looked away, but she stroked the edge of the bed, lightly back and forth. “Last Wednesday was shoot,” he continued. “Test shoot for big commercial. Arrive back London, maybe one in morning. I get job, good money.” He slapped his chest importantly—and winced. Then he growled, “Some bastard smash face up and break rib, and agency, they say, ‘Hey, no. No work now for weeks.’ Lucky for me, Joseph say no rent.”
“You can prove that, can you?” I asked caustically. I refused to be made to feel guilty about the job he'd lost—if he really had. If it hadn't been for Adam, the bastard would have attacked me. Now he was eyeing up my... my what? Girlfriend? Uncomfortable thought. Ignore it. Call it pride, or arrogance, or something; Sam should have been looking at me, not at him.
“Ask agency. Ask photographer,” Karel shrugged. He laid out the kit for another cigarette, tobacco pouch, Rizlas. The tobacco tumbled on to the bedclothes, and he pinched up each strand carefully.
Sam held out her hand and looked expectantly at me. It took me a moment, but then I twigged and handed her Verity's Filofax.
“Verity was seeing someone,” she said. “Here. The day she jumped. And here, a week before. And another, two days before that.”
He took the Filofax and studied it with the eye that wasn't full of smoke. Then he went through stabbing at each entry with a forefinger. “This Wednesday was test shoot. This one, Bristol for party—ask Michael. This one, okay was here alone, so no proof, but not me. This one... don't know.” He ran rapidly back through the weeks then stopped triumphantly on a page. “Ha! Here. Says ‘K.’ ‘K’ is for Karel, yes? Restaurant, then film. I remember. I am K. Other person is no letter. Also, why I go...” He flicked back to more recent times. “Granada Service, A4? I want Verity, she live Battersea.”
That was hard to argue with. Also, if he could prove where he was the day Verity jumped, then that was that. Except for one other thing. I tried to keep my voice casual, because if he sensed the venom he wouldn't reply. “So why did you do it, then, Karel?” I asked. “How much did you get for the TV and stuff? Why piss on the floor and rip things up?”
Strangely, Karel was unfazed. He replied as calmly as ever—directly to Sam, of course. “This is burglary, yes? I not touch. I take money sometimes. Like when this guy come”—he nodded towards me—“I take money for making him angry. But break in? Hard work. No point.”
“Of course you did it,” I snapped. “The doors were unlocked—unlocked, understand? The house door and the one to her flat. Now, who do you know who had the keys?” I injected as much savagery into the sarcasm as I could. “Well, there's Verity... couldn't have been her, she's in intensive bloody care. Oh, and there's you.”
He shook his head happily. At Sam.
“Not. Not have key.”
“You bloody do!” I shouted. “You showed me.”
“Hey, Sam, you like this guy?” Karel opened his mouth in mock-shock. Sam's eyes widened subtly and she moved the faintest fraction towards him.
He grinned toothily round his cigarette. “Friday, after Bastard Face say go from flat, I see this guy. In street, in car,” Karel said. To Sam. He nodded vigorously. “He call over, ‘Hey, you got key?’ I say yes. He say, ‘Is nice flat?’ I say yes.” He beamed. “Man say, ‘Hey, fifty quids for key.'” He settled back with a satisfied sigh.
“You sold the key.�
�� Sam said flatly.
Karel blew smoke at the ceiling. “Fifty quids.” He grinned fruitily at Sam. He kissed two fingers, and blew across them in her direction. She slid a little further up the bed towards him. I might as well not have been there.
“So, what did he look like?” Her eyes were wide. Her face glowed with fascination. Her gaze was locked on him. “What car was he in? Did you notice?”
“Small guy,” Karel said airily. His roll-up had gone out with less than an inch left. He snapped his lighter at it—quickly, so as not to burn his nose. “Yellow hair, smaller maybe even than Bastard Face. And thin, thin, thin. Car was small also. Old. Ford, maybe. Beige. Not cool.” He laughed.
“Is that it?” I growled. “That's all you remember?”
Karel glanced at me, and then turned back to Sam. “Hey, Sam, you very sexy girl, you know. I tell you before, I very great lover. Great body, last long time. Do many times—all night, I think, ‘Why you stay with this guy? You come with me. Hey, now maybe?'” He eased the covers open beside him and favoured her with a wicked smile.
She rolled her lips together. “I'd rather screw a slug,” she said sweetly.
*
Home—at Sam's—she grabbed me and nibbled my neck, and mumbled something about unfinished business. And I stood, wooden and unresponsive, wondering who I was supposed to be.
Her familiarity with Karel had left me uncomfortable. I knew that she'd been putting on an act, flirting with him to encourage him to talk to her. But jealousy wasn't the real reason for my discomfort: it was just the excuse. The truth was, I wanted to put some distance between myself and Sam, but I couldn't admit why, to myself or to her; there was only so much pain I could bear. Today I can talk about it—just barely. But back in the days immediately after Verity's fall, how could I have begun to explain to Sam that, even though what was sustaining me was her warmth and support, being with her also forced me to confront feelings I had successfully buried for decades? I needed Sam, but I also needed our relationship to have no meaning—and that was impossible, because even if this was only a casual fling, every touch and kiss was still an act of betrayal. I still felt I was being unfaithful.
Eventually Sam gave up trying to kiss me. She studied me from a few paces away; I studied the carpet, furiously. I had no idea what to say, and she seemed content to let my silence do the talking. After a while she nodded, as though I had finally made a point that made sense to her.
She began tidying her flat. Loudly. As though I was not there.
*
Later we sat opposite each other with cups of tea in front of us, unnoticed. I was tired. More than anything I wanted to go to bed. On my own. To sleep.
I tried to concentrate on my tea. I don't really like tea.
As I left, we kissed—uncomfortably—and Sam smiled at me. She pulled away from me and folded her arms. She stood with her legs neatly together, suddenly self-contained and rather fragile. She looked sad. It was another unwanted burden.
“Off you go, then,” she said quietly.
“Look, Sam—”
“Will I see you this evening?”
“I haven't... I'll have to see...”
“Bye, then.” She blew me a kiss, and turned away.
The drive back to my own flat was miserable. I could see what I was doing, and I wasn't proud of it. For a mile or so, I tried to justify it as an understandable insecurity about Sam and Karel, but that was so obviously unlikely that I found I couldn't even pretend.
Betrayal. Adam seeing Verity; Karel selling the key to her flat (why? who to?); Gabriel's face at Verity's childhood window... me sleeping with Sam while Verity stared at an empty wall—the biggest betrayal of them all.
Then I was home. I scooped up the post in the hallway, and trudged upstairs to my flat, opening the first letter as I went. It was a mortgage statement. Another: credit card offer from some obscure bank. Another: this one was a duplicate of Verity's phone bill, one of the documents that had been burned in the break-in and I'd had to track down the supplier and request copies.
And Verity's phone bill held a surprise for me. Because the last person Verity had ever called from her flat had been Adam.
CHAPTER 24
YOU FIND THE years have passed. You find that you have found a way.
For me, rejection became a part of life; for Verity, rebellion did. The rest of our school years were spent in the same ritual dance—she initiating, drawing us together, the gathering intimacy, and then withdrawal. So eventually I found a distance from her, close enough for warmth, not so close that it hurt, and I stayed there. Good old dependable Harry, around when he's needed, but always knowing when to make himself scarce.
“Coming out tonight, Harry?”
Someone pressed behind me and put their hands over my eyes. Sweet cool breath against my neck, Wrigley's and woodscent. She released me. She looked up at me—though only slightly, because she had grown far more than I in the last two years. Her smile was white-toothed, soft-lipped; her eyes large and alive, her skirt too short, her breath a little too rapid. Grey school jumper, slack-knotted tie, nylon shirt, soft warm breasts. The skin on her knees was mottled with the cold, red and olive. She stood close and lifted her face towards me.
“We're going down the Cavern. Coming?”
The Cavern was a nightclub—we called them discos back in the dark days of the early eighties. I wasn't the hippest of fifteen-year-olds. I preferred the dim light of the darkroom to the disco. She tutted at my obvious reluctance. “Oh, come on, Harry, it's brilliant, you'll love it. See you outside Central Library at ten. We'll wait ‘til quarter past.”
She skipped away from me, blew a kiss, twirled towards a group of sixth-formers on the far side of the playground, all of them boys. “Be there, Harry,” she sang over her shoulder.
The boys widened their circle to accommodate her, their postures shifting enough to show interest, not enough to be uncool. She swung on the nearest boy's arm as she talked to them, and they all crushed a little closer.
“Hey Verity! Show us your knickers, girl!” Oba yelled from the climbing frame. She glanced over her shoulder and flicked two fingers at him. One of the boys she was with ran a few steps towards the gang, threatening, and they clattered from the climbing frame in all directions. Verity grabbed his arm and pulled him closer to her, hips swaying towards her newest knight.
She was fourteen.
It was freezing. I hugged my arms for warmth. The clock in the entrance hall said twenty-five past one. Five minutes to lessons, but I had a study period. The lights in the classrooms were warm and bright. A few of the more serious-minded children were already inside, making sure of good desks, propping books open, setting pens and rubbers in line. I headed round the back, towards the darkroom, wondering if she would notice me going.
Of course I would go. I would be there at ten. But, then, she knew that. It was part of the ritual.
I was there at nine fifty, in my best (dull) finery, my ears burning from the cold cycle ride to get there, and from the row I'd had with Mum to be allowed out. Waiting on the frozen concrete benches opposite Central Library, hugging my numb hands between my knees, I didn't have a coat—what the hell do you do with an anorak at a disco?
I was still there at ten-thirty, when she turned up with her best mate Gail, plus two other girls from her class and a couple of rough-looking blokes, shaven-headed, in their early twenties. The girls clung together, giggling. They wobbled unsteadily across the road.
“Harry!” Verity yelled raucously, and fell about laughing. Doubled over, she beckoned for me to come over. I felt painfully self-conscious. They were dressed to the nines, I was wearing the corduroy “best” trousers Mum had bought me.
“Looking good, Harry,” Gail said, when they had calmed down enough—and they both wailed hysterically again.
I stood, mute and unsure, until Verity hugged me sloppily. I almost toppled as she slumped on me. I caught the sharp smell of cider. The two rough-necks
prowled uneasily about the periphery, their eyes scanning the shadows, necks craned.
We poured into the club past two unconvinced-looking bouncers. One of them muttered, “Fuckin' kiddies' night.” Verity was clinging to me, giggling. Sound and smoke and light poured out.
It was early, and the disco was almost empty. Red and green light pulsed rhythmically on the tiny dance-floor. The bright lights and deep shadows made it seem far larger than it was. Two girls in white leather trousers were dancing unenthusiastically to “Tainted Love.” They were using a rhythm that had nothing to do with the music, curling around each other at a distance, arms rising for a few swaying beats and then falling again, each instep tapped against the other in turn. A handful of much older men cruised the room's perimeter.
We grabbed an alcove. Verity did the introductions. She couldn't remember the two men's names, and none of us heard what she was saying anyway. We were underage, so Verity persuaded one of the men to get the drinks. He was clearly not best pleased that he had to include me in the round. The other sat on one end of the curved bench, his eyes flicking around the room. The drinks arrived, and we sipped and sat looking at the two girls gyrating, wrapped in angry sound. The lager was watery, and dry-ice fumes burned my nose and tongue.
Verity tugged at my arm. She mouthed something at me; I couldn't hear her, but I knew what she meant. Reluctantly I let her lead me on to the dance-floor. I shifted uneasily from side to side, dazed by sound, and Verity danced for both of us. Gail brought one of the men out to dance with her, and with three couples on the floor it seemed a little less strange. Verity grabbed both my hands and swung them from side to side, singing the words of whatever the song was, pulling me along with her, smiling into my face. I sang back—kind of—still moving awkwardly, but moving, at least, following her lead.
I don't remember the songs, only their effect. It's so easy to stereotype a period; the early eighties, that would be disco, or ska, or New Romantic, or reggae, but actually it was all of those, and loads of other stuff too—Bucks Fizz, Chas and Dave, Abba, the Boomtown Rats, “Remember You're a Womble”—but in recollection, the music all compresses to a single feeling, a time and a place. I remember endless discos from my teenage years. I patrolled the edges of countless rooms, afraid to stay still in case it showed that I was alone, watching the strange rituals of the dance, unsure even how to begin. Verity was trying to pull me into a world where she was someone else. I allowed myself to be pulled.
Frozen Page 23