by Nicci French
'I'm sorry, Miranda,' she said. 'Even friends get ill.'
I held out my hand and shook hers and said goodbye. That evening Polly rang me, cancelling our drink.
CHAPTER 38
I went to a newsagent along the road and bought a pad of notepaper. The only shade they had was some awful sort of violet. But, after all, what did the colour matter? I opened it on my table. The first ballpoint I found didn't work. I licked it and shook it and held it under hot running water and then snapped it and threw it in the bin so that it couldn't cause me pain again. It took a lot of rummaging around in drawers to find another one. I made another resolution. When I found my new home, wherever it was, I would buy a hundred – no, two hundred – pens and I would scatter them around it like little chocolate eggs at Easter. I would hide them in drawers and at the back of shelves and in cupboards and behind books and down the back of sofas and in the pockets of my coats and jackets, so that I would always be able to find one.
I didn't feel in the right mood now. I made myself a cup of coffee and I disproved the saying that a watched pot never boils. I filled it with cold water and stood looking at it, in a dream, until I heard the hissing and saw the lid rattling. I held my hands around the hot mug, feeding off its heat, and stood by the window, seeing nothing. I turned to face my room. Soon everything would be packed in boxes and in storage somewhere and then later it would be unpacked and rearranged somewhere else. For the moment they looked as if everything was normal, but I already felt like an emigrant leaving my old life behind. But there were one or two things I still had to do, and this was the most important. I sat at the table and began to write.
Dear Naomi,
If you're reading these words, that means at least that you
didn't throw the envelope in the bin, so that's something.
As you probably know, if you give this to Brendan/Ben or to the police – it amounts to the same thing – then I'll be arrested and charged with harassment. That's what they told me. I hope you don't. I don't want to go to prison. But if you do hand the letter over, could you read it first? And I want you to read this promise as well: this is my last message to you. I'll never contact you again. It's up to you now.
I'm not going to attempt some defence of my behaviour to you. It would all be too complicated and this letter would have to be as long as a book and I probably wouldn't have the words to explain it, anyway.
All I can do now is to be as clear as possible. I've been accused of being a threat to Brendan. I happen to believe that it's the other way round. I wake in the night and every creak I hear, I think he may have come to finish me off. Well, that's not your concern. I'm frightened for myself but I'm even more certain that you are in danger. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but if things go wrong, the way things go wrong in relationships. I don't think Brendan can take it when things don't go the way he has planned.
What am I saying to you? I was going to send you a sort of checklist. Do you think he is telling the truth? Is he caring for you or controlling you? Is he being secretive? Are there hints of anger? Violence? Do you know what he's doing when he's not with you? How much do you really know about him? Do you believe what he tells you?
But this is all rubbish. Forget all I've said. You'll know.
You'll never hear from me again and I wish you happiness and that you'll never want to contact me. I'm about to leave my flat. I don't know where I'm going, yet. But if you ever want to contact me, I'll put some numbers of various people at the bottom of this letter. One of them should be able to put you in touch with me.
I'm afraid that I think you've had bad luck. But I wish you good luck.
Miranda
Before I could change my mind I put the letter in an envelope, addressed it to her care of Crabtrees and walked out and posted it in the box on the corner.
It's a rule of life that the way to find your missing sock is to throw away the sock that isn't missing. And if you want to know why you shouldn't post a letter, you'll realize it the moment you post it, the very second your thumb and finger release it. As I heard the letter to Naomi clatter down on to the other letters inside the pillar box, I realized there was another alternative I hadn't yet considered. With Brendan, there generally was. I had thought that Naomi might throw the letter away unread or keep it to herself. In either case I would hear nothing. She could give it to the police or to Brendan, who would give it to the police. In either case, I would receive a very unpleasant visit from a police officer in a day or two.
Now I thought of another possibility. Naomi would give it to Brendan and he wouldn't pass it on to the police. He would read the letter and he would realize that I was implacable and he would tell Naomi that it wasn't worth bothering about and he would decide that something would have to be done.
I stood by the postbox for forty-five minutes until a red van pulled up and the postman emerged with a large grey canvas sack. I told him that I'd posted a letter by mistake and that I'd like to get it back. He unfastened a catch on the side of the pillar box and emptied dozens and dozens of letters into his sack. Then he looked at me, as so many people had looked at me, as if I were insane, and shook his head.
CHAPTER 39
'Hello! Miranda?'
His voice boomed up the stairwell, and then I heard his footsteps, taking the steps two at a time. I applied one last precise lick of gloss paint along the skirting board then laid my brush down on the lid of the paint pot.
'The paint's still wet,' I said as he came through the door, loosening his tie as he did so. 'Don't touch anything.' I stood up and crossed the beautiful bare room.
'Except you,' he said. He put his hands on my aching shoulders and kissed me and bit by bit all my stiffness eased away. I thought: how is it possible to feel excited and safe all at the same time; to know someone so well and yet feel there's so much more to know?
'Good day?' I asked.
'This is the best bit. I've got exactly fifty minutes before I have to get back to work. I've bought us some sandwiches from the deli.'
'Shall we have those in a bit?' I said and took him by the hand. I led him up the next narrow flight of stairs, along bare boards and fresh-painted walls, into the small attic room I was using as a bedroom, where a mattress lay under the window and my clothes were stacked in wooden boxes. I took off his jacket and tie and he unbuttoned my overalls and we laughed at each other because here we were on an ordinary Wednesday lunchtime, about to make love in an empty, echoey house. Light fell through the blinds in bars across the room. I hung his suit on a hanger for him. He tossed my paint-stained gear into a corner of the room.
'I'd like to stay here the rest of the day,' I said a bit later, stretched out on the mattress while he lay propped up beside me and stroked my hair.
'Roasted vegetables with mozzarella or farmhouse Cheddar and pickle?'
'Half of each?'
'OK.'
'We can have them in the kitchen, then I can show you what I've done since you were last here.'
I had tried to move out of London, to the country. I really had. I'd burnt my bridges, leaving Bill, selling my flat in record time, putting my stuff into storage. At the same time, I'd written to all the people I knew in the trade and gone for informal talks and considered all my options, just like you're meant to. I'd thought about relocating to Wales and Lincolnshire and even, for a few days, Brittany, where apparently lots of English people were desperate for a builder-cum-interior designer to revamp their picturesque farmhouses. But, like Alice when she goes through the looking glass and finds she has to go backwards in order to advance, the result of all my labours was somehow the exact opposite of the one I'd intended. By attempting to move out of the great churning wheel of the city, I'd somehow ended up at its very hub.
I was now living in a tall, narrow house just south of King's Cross, completely renovating it while the owner was in America for nine months. When he'd offered me the job – an extravagant modernist conversion of the kind I'd dreamed o
f, with free accommodation thrown in – it had seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up. I'd started at the bottom and moved upwards – gutting the kitchen and turning it into a laboratory for food preparation, building a minimalist conservatory into the garden, opening out the living room, turning the smallest bedroom into an en suite bathroom. Eight of the nine months had elapsed. Now only the attic room where I slept was still to be plastered and decorated and opened to the skies.
'You've done a great job,' he said, posting the last of his sandwich into his mouth and pulling on his jacket.
'It's all right, isn't it?'
'And now you're nearly finished.'
'Yes.'
'Miranda?'
'Yes.'
'After that
But then my mobile phone started bleeping from the bedroom, so we said goodbye hastily, and I pounded up the stairs to get it, while downstairs I heard the door slam shut. I caught up the vibrating phone. If I stood on tiptoe and craned my neck, I could just see him from the dormer window, walking briskly along the street. He'd forgotten his tie.
We went for a bike ride in the early evening and had coffee, sitting on the pavement outside even though it was getting chilly. We'd been together nearly one year now, all the seasons. He'd seen me through the anniversaries – Troy 's death, Christmas, Laura's death. He'd met my beaten-down, bewildered parents; met Kerry and her fiancé; met my friends. He'd let me wake him up at three in the morning to talk about the things I tried not to talk about in the day. He'd trailed round builders' yards with me, trying to take an interest in grains of wood, or held ladders while paint dripped on to his hair. I looked at him as he biked beside me, and he felt my gaze, glanced up, swerved. My heart contracted like a fist.
At his flat, he made supper for us – smoked mackerel and salad with a bottle of white wine – while I sat on the church pew he'd bought at the reclamation centre and watched him. When he sat down he took a small bite, but then pushed his plate away.
'Um – what I was saying this afternoon
'Yes?'
'About your plans, you know. Well, I was thinking – you could move in with me.'
I started to speak, but he held up a hand.
'Hang on. I'm saying this all wrong. I don't mean, you could move in with me. Well, I do of course, but that's not what I'm really saying. And when I say, I was thinking you could move in – as if it had just occurred to me – well, it's what I'm thinking about all the time.'
'You're confusing me.'
'I'm nervous, that's why.' He took a breath and then said: 'I very much want you to come and live with me.' He twisted the wine glass round by its stem. 'I want you to marry me, Miranda.'
Happiness bubbled up in me like an underground stream finding the surface. Unlooked-for, undeserved happiness that had come into my parched life when I met him.
'I want to have children with you…' he continued.
'Don,' I said.
'I want to grow old with you. Only you. Nobody but you. There.'
'Oh,' I said.
'I've never said anything like this before.' He gave a grimace and rubbed his eyes. 'Now you're supposed to reply, I think.'
'Listen, Don,' I said.
'Just tell me.'
I leaned towards him and put my hands on either side of his lovely, clever, kind face; kissed him on the eyelids and then on the lips. 'I love you too,' I said. 'I love you very, very, very much. Only you.'
'That's good,' he said. 'Isn't it?'
'Can you wait a bit?'
'Wait?'
'Yes.' I held his gaze.
'Well, of course I can wait – but does that mean you're not sure? About me, I mean?'
'No. It doesn't mean that at all.'
'Why?'
'I am sure about what I feel,' I said. 'I used to wonder how you knew when it was the real thing. Not any more.'
'So why?'
'It's complicated,' I said evasively.
'Are you scared?'
'Do you mean of commitment or something?'
'Not exactly. But after everything you have been through, maybe you feel it's wrong to be happy.'
'It's not that.'
'Or maybe you feel you're not safe, and therefore anyone who's with you isn't safe either. We've talked about that – about how you felt you were the carrier. Is that it? Everyone you love dies.'
'You're the psychologist,' I said.
'Because I don't mind,' he said. 'Everything's a risk. You just have to choose the risk you want to take. I chose a long time ago. Now you have to as well.'
I put my hands over his, turned his palms upwards, kissed them both. 'I have chosen,' I said.
'You're crying,' he said. 'Into your food.'
'Sorry.'
'Of course I'll bloody wait.'
I've met a man. Don. I wish you could meet him as well. I think you'd like him. I know he'd like you. It feels – oh, I don't know, odd, unsettling, not right, to he in love with someone again. I never thought it would happen, not after everything. I thought all of that was over. And sometimes – well, a lot, really – I get this sudden rush of panic that it's wrong. Wrong to be happy, I mean, when you're not here and Laura's gone and Mum and Dad are wrecked and so many people have suffered and I feel that it was because of me. It was me who spread the terrible contagion. I can see that sardonic expression on your face when I say that, but nevertheless it's true. I'll always miss you, Troy. Every minute of every day of every week of every year that's left. So how is it possible that I can allow myself to be happy? Maybe it isn't. We'll see.
CHAPTER 40
My eyes were closed, hard, my breath coming in gasps. My heart was beating so fast that my body seemed to hum with it. I was sweating. I could hardly feel the pain. I knew it was there. On my face, around my jaw. I could taste blood, warm, metallic. Around my neck, the scraping. My ribs, sore, bruised. My eyes still closed, afraid of what was in store. I felt the sounds of someone approaching, the vibration of footsteps on the stairs. The touch, when it came, was gentle on my face and cheeks, but it still made me flinch. I didn't open my eyes. I murmured something.
'Jesus, Miranda!' said the voice. 'I heard glass breaking… What the fuck? Miranda?'
I opened my eyes. The light hurt them. Don. Don's lovely face looking down at me, close, distressed. He ran over to the window. I spoke in a murmur, but Don couldn't make it out. He leaned close to my face.
'Said he was going to kill me,' I said in little more than a whisper.
'Who?'
'Hurt me,' I said. 'He hurt me.'
His expression darkened. 'Was it him? Brendan?'
'Said he'd come for me.'
'What's he done to you?'
I felt him gently touching my face, stroking my hair, unfastening my shirt, assessing the damage.
'You're bleeding.'
I just groaned. He was looking around.
'There's blood on the… What the fuck did that bastard do to you? I'm calling the police. And an ambulance.'
'No,' I said, half raising myself and flinching at the pain it caused me. 'Don't… It's not…'
'What are you talking about?' Don said, almost angrily. 'I'm sorry, Miranda. I'm not listening to you.' I heard three little bleeps as he punched the numbers into his mobile phone. I sank back almost sobbing, partly with the pain, partly at the thought of what was to come.
I wasn't there when the police examined the room, when they dabbed at the blood on the wall and picked hairs off the carpet and put the knife in a plastic bag. I was grateful for that. It would be like the death of Troy all over again. I might have found it hard to retain control. Don told me about all that later. He had wanted to come with me in the ambulance, but a policeman told me he ought to stay and help to identify objects at the scene. What was mine, what was his and what was 'foreign'. Much, much later Don told me that he had been – in the midst of his distress – rather interested to see the scene-of-crime procedures with all their special gloves and tweezers and scalpels,
plastic bags and labels, flash photography. He'd been rather excited to be on the inside of the tape that was shutting the crime scene off from the outside world.
Meanwhile I had been taken away in an ambulance with a female police officer for company. She was like a free pass that took me to the front of the queue. I was led through a waiting area full of people who, whatever their injuries, were inordinately interested in me – a young woman being led by two nurses and a uniformed police officer. What could have happened to me? They would probably have to wait hours. Within two minutes I was being examined by a young doctor and a nurse. A minute later he stepped aside when a consultant in a white coat and a spotted tie arrived. I felt nervous, as you do with doctors.
He examined my face and the inside of my mouth.
'What were you struck with?' he said.
'A wall,' I said.
'Do you know who did this?' he asked.
I nodded. He turned to the police officer.
'You'll need to photograph this. The neck as well.'
'He's on his way,' said the WPC.
'We'll be taking an X-ray, but the cheekbone is probably fractured.'
I gave a cry because as he said it he had given a dab on my cheek with his finger, as if to test his theory. He shone a light into my eyes and into my ears. He held up his finger and asked me to look at the point as he moved it around.
'Were you sexually assaulted?' he asked.
'No.'
Even so, he asked me to take off my clothes so that he could examine me. The female police officer said that she was called Amy O'Brien and did I mind if she were present for the examination. I shook my head. As I took my clothes off, she said that she would need them for evidence. Was that all right?
'What am I going to wear?'
'We'll get you a nightie,' the doctor said.
'Your, erm… you know…' said Amy.