I sank away from sensation, into the velvet pool inside me.
*
You don't feel good after being beaten half to death. I had three broken ribs, a broken nose, a cracked cheekbone, splintered eye socket, fractured pelvis, and so many deep bruises that it was easier to count the patches between rather than the injuries themselves. My cheek and lips were gashed and stitched. One eye was covered in thick bandages and hurt like hell. One arm was strapped, and the other felt like it should be. I was disoriented. My head pounded. My throat was half crushed. My jaw muscles wouldn't work properly: they were numb and unresponsive. When my lips touched, I couldn't feel them; they tingled and felt ten times larger than they could possibly have been. There was a sparkle in the room. The walls were over-bright and they seemed to be moving subtly, as though they were not solid but smoke, held improbably together.
*
I woke. The curtains were still closed, but there was a flickering strip-light in the room, unbearable green, throbbing.
Sam was there. She sat beside me, held my hand in both of hers and stroked it. She was talking and she was crying. I closed my eyes against the glare, and squeezed her hand. She squeezed back and stopped talking. I heard her sob. Later, there was silence. I opened my eyes. She was there, still holding me, just looking. The light was out, and a warmer glow spread over her from the corridor beyond. She smiled and her eyes glistened. She leaned forwards with her hair brushing my face, and kissed me.
*
“Adam,” I said. This time, I heard myself speak.
It was morning, grey and early. The nurse was scraping back the curtains. “Oh! Good morning, Harry!” she said merrily, and bustled from the room.
I lay back and watched the dawn crawl across the ceiling. My teeth ached, and my cheek throbbed. I couldn't open my eyes properly. My whole body was an immense sprawl of pain. The crisp fibres of the sheets tore at my fingertips, ripped at the roots of my hair.
Sam scuttled in. She looked anxious and uncertain. Her eyes were red and gritty. She saw me and smiled.
“Hey, you,” she said. She sat by the bed and took my hand. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the feel of knowing she was there.
“I thought I'd lost you,” she said. She lifted my hand and kissed it. Pain jolted through me, though I could barely even flinch. She started.
“Oh. Sorry.” She set my hand back down, still folded in hers.
I opened my eyes and glanced at her. Mercifully I didn't have to turn my head, she was just within squinting range. I tried to open my mouth and couldn't; my cheeks were too swollen, and the pressure seared my skin.
She saw and spoke for me. “Adam.” She nodded. “We know. He's gone. No sign at all. Bank accounts cleaned out, lock, stock and proverbial. Car abandoned in a gravel-pit, house sold, it's a total mess. The police are on to it, they've notified the airports and the ferry ports. Nothing.”
Something must have shown in my face. “It's been over a week, Harry. Sorry, but there's no chance, not now.”
She looked at me for a very long time. Then she said gently, “I thought you weren't coming back, Harry.” She squeezed my hand and a tear dripped on to it. I tried to squeeze back.
I slept.
*
Sam had saved me—but for all the wrong reasons.
She had got home about ten minutes after I left my phone message. She thought it was a grand farewell—that I had gone to Verity's flat to kill myself. From her perspective, I can see the logic; I had been remote, confused. My moods were swinging unpredictably. I was consumed by losing Verity, I wanted there to be a mystery in it. I was sad and desperate and Sam had cut me off.
Ironic, isn't it? Because I'd had no intention whatsoever of killing myself. It hadn't even occurred to me. I was just feeling profoundly sorry for myself, finally ready for grief, perhaps, and maybe that was why my apology to Sam had been truly sincere—at last. Who said growing up had to be easy? I'm glad she misunderstood and came running, though, because I didn't want to die.
She had tried to ring me back—but by then my mobile was halfway down the stairs and I had never rung off, so she was stuck at her end with an open but useless line. She rang the police from a phone box, and drove to Verity's flat at lethal speed. She got there moments before the police and found me. The ambulance arrived shortly afterwards.
Of Adam, there was no sign.
They were treating my injuries as attempted murder, which seemed ridiculous to me—and Verity's too, of course, now that it was too late. The detectives explained to me, in charmingly methodical words, that they were also keen to talk with Adam about Serious Crimes in Which He Was Suspected of Substantial Involvement. Then there were the more petty charges: breaking and entering, fraud for some trivial misdemeanour at the council, which I couldn't follow. He was also “suspected” of grievous assault on Sarah. There were various conspiracy charges for him to answer—and a private detective working under the arches in Hackney had been arrested on suspicion of illegally entering Verity's flat on Adam's instructions.
Sarah's godfather, Michael Antrim, was on bail, charged with false dealing and accounting. Strangely, though, the theft of over two hundred thousand pounds from Sarah (the damage was worse than she had thought) was considered entirely legal; the police were sorry, but there was nothing they could do. Likewise, apparently, it was Sarah's responsibility that Adam had taken out a second mortgage of three hundred thousand on the house and defaulted on every payment after the third; that money, too, had vanished, and all the police could say was that there might be another fraud charge to add to the list.
But they would have to catch him first. He had close to half a million pounds in cash, and several very good reasons for making himself scarce. He could be anywhere, the police said helpfully. Interpol had been informed. After initial optimism and knowing nods, the police were now doing a good line in shrugs.
*
I stayed with Sam while I recovered—in her bed; she slept on the sofa. (“Unfinished business,” she said brightly, when I complained that I was now feeling well enough for a little company—and shut the door on me.)
One morning, three weeks after the attack, I announced that I was halfway well, and we went to Verity's flat. There were things to do. Verity's landlord was insisting that it was Verity's responsibility to repair the damage to the flat. Sam had weathered countless arguments on the subject, and we'd finally decided that the only sensible way forward was to salvage what we could of Verity's belongings and then leave the landlord to it. Let him protest until he was hoarse. He was a belligerent, unpleasant man, preoccupied only with money. The need to let the place again would soon override any further posturing about who was responsible; and in any case, his building insurance would cover it.
The door had been boarded up and an apologetic police officer with a jemmy had to force it open, one last time. They had thoughtfully tidied the debris into a few large mounds. The furniture had been straightened: chairs and tables now stood back on their legs, a couple of stools from the kitchen had been placed neatly against the wall in the living room. What remained of the sofa had been removed. We wandered round the flat as though it was a museum. It smelt strange—not dusty but unlived-in. The photos that had been on the wall now lay in ranks along the dining-table, glass shards over dead black and white eyes; a row of children with their tongues out, one grinning for no reason. My dried blood was smeared darkly on the floor.
Sam wandered into the kitchen to gaze at the gutted cupboards and neat piles of crockery. I stayed in the ravaged remains of the living room.
The drinks table Verity loved and everyone else hated had been set upright, a tiny round top, a twined metal stem and three unstable feet at the bottom. The answering-machine had been returned to its usual precarious perch atop it—the one piece of rearrangement that the police had got right, pointlessly ornamental in a chaotic waste. They had even placed the phone's severed handset neatly in place. The machine's message light was flashing fiv
e, and idly I hit the play button. The machine clunked, spooled some tape, clunked again, paused, clunked (just how many clunks does it take to play a tape? Clearly the machine's manufacturers had decided to be generous, just to be safe).
It began to play—voices familiar from the day after the break-in: “Verity, dear, it's Erica...” clunk; me, muttering, “Where were you?” clunk; someone who had rung off without leaving a message, clunk; Erica again... and the last message, a new one, but an old voice, frail and distant.
“Verity? Darling, it's Erica. Erica McKelvie at number twelve. Darling, it's been weeks. I've been so worried. There's a charming man across the road who's collecting my pension—Sylvia's son, lovely man—and Vera's been going to the library for me, but if you can't find the time to help any more, could you ring and tell me, darling? Please? It's embarrassing, asking people.” There was a pause, and a rattle as the receiver went down—almost. Then she spoke again, in an even more martyred tone: “And you'll want your things back. They're exactly where you left them. I haven't touched them. But if I shan't be seeing you...”
Then, with no goodbye, there was a click. The machine clunked a few times, and was silent.
I looked up. Sam was in the doorway to the kitchen, staring at the machine. We gazed at each other. Then, without a word, we left to find Erica McKelvie who lived at number twelve.
*
Erica was hard work. She wanted to make sure we knew how difficult life was at her age, with her arthritis troubling her and most of her friends dead. I didn't doubt it was difficult—but surely it wasn't necessary to remind us of it every third sentence? Eventually, we dispensed with the explanations and introductions, and even with the endless commiserations about the terrible problem of her legs.
She fetched the box Verity had left with her. She held it on her lap and continued her monologue. We eyed the box and fidgeted uncomfortably.
“She was such a darling,” Erica croaked. “Came twice a week. Pension, shopping, nothing was too much trouble. And such fun. She was an energetic young thing.” She looked at us conspiratorially. Her eyes were filmy, and I saw that behind Erica's selfishness lay desperate loneliness.
“Do you know?” Erica whispered loudly. “Some of the things she told me quite made me blush. And I thought I'd lived the high life!” She laughed throatily, and slapped the top of the box with the slow deliberation her gnarled fingers demanded.
It was a miniature treasure chest, less than a foot long, perhaps six inches deep and the same high, with a domed veneer lid, and a brass hasp with a tiny keyhole. Breaking it open would be easy. Sam, however, had different ideas. She groped around in her bag, still paying full attention to Erica—who didn't seem to care if we listened, just as long as we were there—and pulled out a bunch of keys, mine, which she still had so that she could look after my flat.
“Poor Verity. How terrible,” Erica burbled, as though Verity's fall was a piece of gossip. She was relishing the horror. “She was so charming. A cheery soul, yes. Thoughtful. Helpful. Always did my pension and the shopping. Never a bad word. I'm sure Sylvia's boy—I think it's Martin, I never can remember, charming man—I'm sure he doesn't mind doing it. But, yes, yes, I'll miss her, definitely.”
Sam was swinging the bunch of keys distractingly in the corner of my eyeline. It was deliberate; she wanted me to look. I was puzzled—and then, suddenly, I saw. She was dangling the bunch from a single key; it was tiny, brass, and hollow-centred—the kind of key you might use to lock a drawer.
*
We took the box to Sam's, and sat with it on the table between us, until Sam shoved the keys over to me, and waited.
The key fitted.
It was a sewing-box—cotton reels and little cards with needles threaded through them, shreds of cloth, strips of foam, pinking shears. The inside was sectioned into small compartments, but stuff flowed between them without restraint; there was no pattern to it.
Sam obviously knew more about sewing-boxes than I did, because at that point I'd have given up. She slid her fingertips down the inside edges, and gradually pulled the whole thing upwards. It was a tray, set inside the box. Cotton reels spilled over, then the whole thing came free.
Beneath, in the bottom of the box, there were two audio cassettes and a manila envelope. Inside the envelope were four photographs mounted in a row on a thin strip of card, and a cheque. I stared at the photos. Sam picked up the cheque. “Cash. Twenty thousand pounds.” She whistled.
“Who's it from?” I asked. The photos were absorbing me. Verity, the tree...
“Can't make out the signature. The account's Wandsworth Offshore Enterprises.”
“It'll be Adam's,” I said dully. “His little stash. He must have tried to buy her off. So she kept the cheque as proof.”
Sam leaned over my shoulder to kiss me, and I groaned as one of my ribs grated. “Oh. Sorry.” She kissed my neck instead. “What about the photos?”
“The zoetrope.”
Verity in mid-air, caught from the side and behind, her hair flying, her legs kicked up, and beyond her the huge trunk of the hornbeam. My memory filled in the missing angles. She was screaming happily, her dress was bunched; skinny gold legs, her teeth glowing white in the failing light. Four photos.
“Eight, nine, ten, eleven,” Sam said.
And, at last, I knew why she had cut them out. It wasn't the tree; it was what hid behind it. In one shot, a crouched back and legs were visible. In the other three shots, on the other side of the tree, there was a face. It peeped out alertly at her. Glasses, thickish lips, wide blue eyes; a certain slyness that had seemed quite natural at the time. The face suggested nothing; it was as frozen as a cat staring at a bird. The gaze was beady and expectant.
She was asking for it, Harry. You'd have done it too.
No, Adam. No, I wouldn't have.
“I think I'd like to lie down now,” I mumbled. I put the tapes and photos back in the box, and locked it.
Sam held me as I lay. She stroked my hair and said nothing.
CHAPTER 31
REGRET.
Is there a moment in a life, a single point around which everything turns? A glance, or a word, a person, a landscape, a proposition? Was there a moment when it all could have changed, when the outcome could have been different, our world transformed?
You can never know. Because what's done is done. What's lost is lost.
*
It was perhaps a month before she fell.
Jim's had had the usual crowd. There had been three men at the bar with cement-blunt fingers curled round their pints, there had been a couple of pinstriped idiots trying to drown the overloud music with their laughter. And there had been me, and Verity.
It was early summer, slightly chilly. The door to the street was open, admitting the bright grey light of early evening. Not many cars passed; when one did, you could hear the thump of its stereo even over the music. The air smelt of grass and traffic.
We had our usual small round table, its uneven top slopped with condensation and beer. Verity was scraping the puddles around with a beer mat, marshalling them and blotting them up. It was my fourth pint. Verity was on her third tequila but had two glasses of Pils waiting in the queue. We weren't far off the swift-piss-then-off-to-a-restaurant phase, but it looked like tonight we might not get that far.
I was miserable. The night before, a girl had tried to seduce me, a girl I didn't fancy. And after three and a half pints with Verity, it seemed to me that this was the story of my life.
“It's never exactly right, is it, Verity?” I mumbled. I grabbed my pint and created another spillage for Verity to mop up. “They fancy you, so you don't fancy them, or you fancy them...”
“Oh, come on, Harry, it could be worse.” She stroked the back of my not-drinking hand where it lay between puddles on the table.
Above the pub's benches there were etched windows; above those, the glass was leaded and stained. The glass leaves of a vine wove their way round the edge of the
ceiling, sharp green against watery yellow. As the twilight became paler, the colours faded.
The song changed. Verity stood without asking and bought another round. I raised my glass to her, and handed her a fresh beer mat from the neighbouring table to chase any new spills.
“I'm serious,” I said, after my first gulp. She knocked back half of one of her Pils chasers, then nursed her new tequila.
She was lovely. Her eyes were wide and attentive, her skin brown, delicately stretched over her cheeks. I could see a faint crease of tiredness beneath her eyes, but her smile was as wide, her teeth as bright as ever. She glowed. She always had.
“Thanks, Verity,” I said, “for being there.”
“Hey,” she said, and spread her arms. “How could I miss a date with a hunk like you?”
I sniggered for her, but I felt a lurch of emptiness. “Seriously...”
“I am serious,” Verity said, nettled. She stroked my hand again. “You're the biz, Harry. Anyone would have you.”
Her breasts were small under the sheer silk of her blouse, upturned, sharp-pointed. Lower, near her waistband, in the gap between two buttons, the blouse gaped a few millimetres, and I could see the sunken shadow of her belly button.
Time passed.
I stood to get another round. Somewhere, in the last ten minutes, the idea of finding a restaurant had begun to recede; it was already nine-thirty, so what was the point? “Yeah,” I said, wagging my finger again. “But I want someone to love me.” I headed for the bar.
I stood next to the three silent wise men and ordered a Kronenbourg, a tequila and—I looked at Verity over my shoulder—best to forget the Pils. Jim nodded, and then disappeared to talk to someone else who had just walked in. Rounds in Jim's took time. On the frosted panes beneath the tree motif, the glass was turning rosy. There were old black and white photos on the walls: long-gone people standing, gaunt, in stiff rows outside vanished buildings.
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