by Jo Verity
The lights were on in the basement. Feray and the kids would have eaten by now and were probably watching television. He hadn’t seen her since Sunday. He’d been expecting her to have another go at him, to launch a second attack, but nothing so far.
He wondered how she would explain his absence to the kids. They were used to his casual involvement in their lives and they seemed to like him. Kids of their age were savvy and they’d have worked out that he and their mother were having sex – although he and Feray had done their best to be discreet. So what would she tell them? That he was a two-timing creep? He’d be sad if she did, but they were her children and she must decide what line to take.
He unlocked the front door and climbed to the top of the house. Having his own place had been at the heart of the dream that he’d hauled half way around the world. On that first day, when he’d unlocked the door to this flat – his very own place – he’d been elated. But recently, instead of feeling liberated by solitude he was beginning to feel limited by it. As he switched on the light, he saw his dream world for what it was – neglected and makeshift. The furniture, the pans and crockery that he’d so diligently accumulated, were second-hand junk. His clothes were other people’s rejects.
Still wearing his hat and jacket he sprawled on the bed. What the fuck was going on? Taking against his home? It was as bad as taking against himself. Perhaps Feray was in the basement sticking pins in his effigy. Or Irene, riffling through her tracts and calling hellfire down upon his heathen head.
Feray used to come up here once in a while to share a bottle of wine and make love. She never held back with her condemnation of the place. The mouldering mastic around the shower tray. The ill-fitting blinds. The damp patch behind the bed-head. She hated the carpet, which caused a shower of sparks to fly when they pulled off their clothes in the dark. He christened the phenomenon ‘the North London Lights’ and let her criticism wash over him, much as a teenager tunes out parental disapproval.
One day Vivian might ask to see where he lived. He pictured her, standing just inside the door, saying nothing but taking it all in, her silence a hundred times more potent than Feray’s tirade.
He washed the crockery that had accumulated on the draining board, dried it and put it away. He returned books and CDs to the shelf. Then he emptied the contents of his bedside chest – the one he’d scavenged from a skip – on to the floor. Mismatched socks. Off-white underpants with ruptured waistbands. Misshapen T-shirts. Scabby sweaters. Discarding two odd socks and a sweat-stained T-shirt he folded everything and put it back. Now at least it was tidy crap.
He turned his attention to the party. Grey. Plain. Matt. He checked his hanging rail almost wishing he hadn’t asked for a steer. Unless one of Irene’s miracles had taken place while he wasn’t looking, he wouldn’t find anything like that here.
26
Gil showered and changed in the staff cloakroom. He’d gone for his blue shirt – the one he’d worn to the Roundhouse – and black jeans. He was in two minds about a tie. Wear one, then whip it off, or go without and have a standby in his pocket? He plumped for the former – a slim, woven silk job in shades of orange which Feray had bought him for his birthday and which he’d worn only once. He scrutinised the man in the mirror. Not bad.
He returned to the office to collect his anorak when he spotted an overcoat draped over a chair. It was tweed – grey tweed – with a crimson lining, and when he tried it for size it fitted perfectly. The pockets contained half a packet of Polos, a flyer for a computer repair business and a betting shop pen, but nothing to identify its owner. The H&S crew were long gone, heading for yet another Christmas party. He’d have the coat back by eight-thirty tomorrow morning – no harm done.
By a stroke of luck, overground trains from Euston to Watford stopped at Queens Park and by seven-twenty he was standing in the Tube station entrance, watching passengers coming through the barrier. They emerged in batches, slapping Oyster cards on the readers, pulling up coat collars against the sudden blast of cold air before filtering out into the night.
Most mornings, on the way to work, Gil studied his fellow travellers. The folks sitting on the top deck of his bus weren’t hedge fund managers or barristers or chief executives, they were the drones who kept the capital functioning. They couldn’t afford to buy London property but there was work for them in this city and they shelled out rent for tiny flats or tinier bedsits, sharing rooms and making do. Day after day, they turned out – clean and decent – heading for sandwich bars, hotels, stations and hospitals in order to make little more than the minimum wage. He had to hand it to them.
He checked his watch. Seven-twenty-eight. Another batch came pushing through, and there she was, in her rust-red coat – the one she was wearing when they first met.
‘Hi,’ he said.
He was tempted to touch her – her hair, her ear lobe – but there were people around and he didn’t know how she felt about public demonstrations of affection.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘You’re sure you okay with this?’
She was giving him a final chance to change his mind. Naturally he’d prefer to have her to himself this evening but that wasn’t on offer.
‘Let’s do it,’ he said.
She smiled and caught his arm, steering him out into the street. They passed a parade of seedy shops then turned into a wide road flanked by municipal-style blocks of flats, three or four storeys high. A stream of cars and buses trundled past, pumping out fumes and spewing up filthy water, and he positioned himself between her and the traffic, recalling how his father had done the same thing whenever he walked alongside a woman.
‘Who’ll be at this party?’ he said.
Aside from Ottilie, and Howard Friel, Vivian hadn’t mentioned her colleagues.
‘Just Friel people. Ottilie has thirty-eight on her list.’
‘Did you tell her how we met?’
‘No. You didn’t come up.’
‘I sound like a boil,’ he said.
The story would soon be out, of course. ‘How do you two know each other?’ was a classic icebreaker. He would tell them how they’d both ended up in A&E after the explosion and thus explain away Vivian’s unlikely ‘new friend’.
‘Down here,’ she said, pointing to a turning on the right. ‘Kingswood Avenue.’
They exchanged mucky pavements and grinding traffic for a broad, tranquil street. Two-storey terraced houses ran down one side and some kind of dense hedge – perhaps four feet high – lined the other. On the far side of the hedge, skeletal trees loomed, caught in the glow of the streetlights.
‘What’s over there?’ he said pointing to the trees and the darkness beyond.
‘The park. Queens Park.’
‘Makes sense.’
Roads joined Kingswood Avenue at regular intervals, dividing the houses into groups of eight or ten, avoiding the sense of monotony in what was turning out to be a long, straight street.
Every house in Coffs Harbour, give or take, stood in its own plot. For most part they were sprawling, single-storey affairs, built of timber with roofs of corrugated sheeting. Even those in the West End, the least prosperous part of town, had their own gardens complete with palm tree and miniature pool for the kids.
It had taken Gil a while to get used to London’s tight streetscape – to read the clues to the status of an area and its residents. The houses in Kingswood Avenue weren’t large but they were gracious and well maintained compared with the pinched terraces of his own neighbourhood. He saw shrubs and hedges in front of these houses, not discarded mattresses and bin-bags of decaying litter. Properties here hadn’t been desecrated by jerry-built extensions and gimcrack modifications. He’d never studied house prices – what was the point? – but he’d suffered enough mind-numbing conversations with Kevin to know that a house in Kingswood Avenue would command an astronomical sum.
He pointed to an estate agent’s board in one of the gardens. ‘How much would this one set me back?’
He laughed. ‘That’d buy you a whole street in Coffs. Not that you’d want one.’
The Friel’s house was a couple of hundred yards down. Lights glowed in the ground floor windows and over the front door.
‘Stylish,’ he said pointing to a tapering column of snow, perhaps five feet tall, to one side of the garden path.
‘Howard’s been on about it for days. It’s a scale model of Cleopatra’s Needle. He barrowed snow over from the park.’ She frowned and her mood changed, as if a bogeyman had stepped out of the shadows. ‘Richard saw our snowman. He thought it was funny.’
Gil smashed his fist into his palm in mock fury, eager to lift her spirits. ‘Bastard. We’ll hide the next one under a tarp. What d’you think?’
‘I think we should get inside before we freeze.’
She rang the bell and a man – forty-ish? gay? – opened the door.
‘Hello, darling,’ he said, brushing her cheeks with his lips. ‘Cara’s made me bellhop for the evening.’
Vivian made the introductions. ‘Ralph, this is Gil. Gil, Ralph.’
The men shook hands and Ralph held his arm out for their coats. Gil watched him glance at the label in the borrowed coat but couldn’t tell whether he was impressed or not.
Glasses of wine stood on a tray in the hall and they helped themselves. The house was filled with a delicious winey, garlicy smell. Murmuring voices and the strains of something easy – Jamie Cullum? Brad Mehldau? – leaked through an open doorway. Vivian guided him into a dimly lit room.
He’d assumed the Friels would go for modern stuff. Steel and leather. Monochrome. Stark and uncomfortable. What he saw surprised him. Rich red walls, overstuffed armchairs, patterned rugs on polished boards, paintings and knick-knacks – bourgeois more than Bauhaus.
Nine or ten people were sitting on sofas ranged around an open fire.
‘Vivian. Hi,’ one of the women called out, beckoning them. ‘Budge up everyone.’
Vivian squeezed onto the sofa and he perched on the arm next to her.
‘This is Gil,’ Vivian said.
One by one, like well-schooled children, they gave their names. ‘Alex.’ ‘Celine.’ ‘Thalia.’ ‘Fareed.’ The roll-call continued but, after ‘Chris’, Gil stopped trying to remember.
They resumed their conversation, discussing travel plans for the coming holiday. The best route to Dorset. The disparity in train ticket prices. Whether it was better to travel overnight. They moved on to reminiscences of nightmare journeys and Christmases trapped with feuding families in remote locations. Gil half-listened, more interested in watching Vivian. She was absorbing it all, occasionally laughing or nodding but she made no contribution to the exchanges. These were her workmates, people with whom she spent every day, yet a distinct something separated her from them. He couldn’t, for instance, imagine them teasing her or including her in office tomfoolery. Maybe they found her intimidating. Maybe they felt sorry for her. It was difficult to put a finger on.
The sofa contingent dispersed to refill glasses and inspect the giant Christmas tree that occupied the bay window. He and Vivian lingered by the fire, stoking it with coal from an iron bucket. Vivian nodded towards a black woman on the far side of the room who appeared to be arguing with a beefy young man.
‘That’s Ottilie,’ she said.
‘The bloke?’
‘Spencer. Her partner. I’ll introduce you.’
He laid a hand on her arm. ‘Not yet. I need to hone my small talking skills before I tackle Ottilie.’
She stood up. ‘I’m going to the loo. You’ll be okay?’
‘I’ll do my best.’
He was on his way to find another glass of wine, when a tall man came towards him, hand outstretched. ‘Howard. Howard Friel.’
‘Gil Thomas.’ They shook hands. ‘Thanks for inviting me.’
‘Thank me at the end of the evening, after Cara has browbeaten you into doing things grown men don’t normally do.’
‘Sounds alarming.’
‘It is. You’ve seen this evening’s timetable?’ Friel pointed to a hand-lettered poster that was fixed to the wall above the piano. ‘It’s all there. As you see, we eat at eight. Games start at nine.’
‘Games?’
‘“Charades.” “Who am I?” “Mafia Murder.” “Bang.” A word of warning. Not knowing how to play isn’t an acceptable excuse. We wind up with a concert. This, you’ll be pleased to know, is optional. Cara isn’t quite that cruel. Kicking out time – midnight on the dot.’
‘Interesting.’
‘It seems cold-blooded but it ensures that everyone knows what’s what and, more importantly, when to go home.’
Gil congratulated Friel on his snow sculpture and they discussed the pitfalls of working in a medium that was prone to melting. They moved on to the drawbacks of smokeless coal – ‘efficient but aesthetically unpleasing’ – and the characteristics of the perfect Christmas tree. It was party drivel – verbal gymnastics, one-upmanship in wit. Friel didn’t ask what he did for a living or refer to his Australian twang – the usual topics when meeting someone for the first time. Yet he had the feeling that Friel was trying to trip him up. Vivian clearly rated him but Gil’s first impression was that there was something slippery about the man.
At eight o’clock, everyone filtered through to the kitchen where Friel and an arty-looking woman were stationed behind a table, ladling food into deep bowls.
Ralph was in the queue behind Gil. ‘Cara doesn’t hold with finger food, thank God. She favours food over cooking.’
This evening’s choice was between vegetable curry and goulash. Gil chose the latter then went in search of Vivian whom he found sitting on the stairs, bowl balanced on her knee.
She had a knack of making the simplest outfit look out of the ordinary. Tonight she was wearing what was, in effect, a grey sack with sleeves, her only adornment a long silver chain, the links the diameter of ten pence pieces. As far as he could make out she was without makeup. She made the other women look overdressed.
‘You look very lovely,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’
She moved up a few steps, making room for him to sit below her on the stairs.
‘Who’ve you been talking to?’ she said.
‘Ralph. And your boss. And someone called Andrea who lives in Oxford.’
He hoped she wouldn’t ask what he thought of Friel. He could hardly confess that, on the strength of one fatuous conversation, he hadn’t taken to the man. On the other hand, he didn’t want to lie to her. He’d been less than straight about his relationship with Feray and it hadn’t felt good.
‘Should I start sweating about these games?’ he said.
His diversionary tactics worked and, while they ate, she gave him a rundown on the party games.
In the kitchen Cara Friel was blackmailing people into taking second helpings. ‘My freezer’s bursting. This will all go in the bin if you don’t eat it.’
She smiled when she saw Vivian.
‘Sorry, darling, I haven’t had a moment. Once we’ve got pudding out of the way, I can join the fun.’ She plopped a spoonful of trifle into a bowl. ‘Is Nick around? I haven’t seen him.’
Although Gil was standing alongside Vivian, Cara hadn’t registered that they were together, and he saw the colour rise in Vivian’s cheeks.
‘Actually, Nick and I have split up. I thought you might have heard.’
Cara looked anguished. ‘No. Howard is hopeless when it comes to telling me the important things.’ She put her arms around Vivian and patted her on the back. ‘You poor thing. Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. We’re both fine. Neither of us has time at the moment. My father’s in hospital and—’
‘Now Howard did remember to tell me that. You must be frantic with worry. How is he? I must send a card.’
‘He’s making progress.’
Gil moved closer to Vivian,
leaving her no choice but to introduce them.
‘Cara, this is Gil,’ she said.
He gave what he hoped was a winning smile. ‘Delighted to meet you, Mrs Friel.’
‘Gil. What an interesting name. And it’s Cara.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Are you an architect, Gil?’
‘Afraid not. I’m a medical photographer.’
‘Thank heavens,’ she said. ‘Medical photography. It sounds fascinating. When we have a minute, you must tell me all about it. So Gil, how d’you know our lovely Vivian?’
‘Gil was one of the people at the crossing when the bomb went off,’ Vivian said. ‘We happened to be in A&E at the same time.’
Cara’s face crumpled. ‘Awful, awful business. When we heard how close Vivian came to…’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t even want to think about what might have happened. It must be a tremendous help, having someone to talk to, someone who’s been through the same trauma. One’s own little support group.’
Vivian’s concise account of their meeting was accurate, and Cara clearly found it a reasonable foundation for a friendship. Fine. After all, he’d suggested that it would be enough to appease the curious. And yet…
All evening Vivian felt she was holding her breath. Only when Ralph handed them their coats did she find it possible to relax. There had been no need for disquiet. Gil had chatted, stacked the dishwasher, not tried too hard when they were playing games, and had the decency not to volunteer for the concert.
‘Where do you live, Gil?’ Cara said when they were leaving.
‘I’m in Kentish Town.’
‘Not too far from Vivian then?’
Vivian knew where Cara was going with this, and why. A young landscape architect had gone missing in Bristol. It was four or five days since she was last seen buying a pizza on her way home from work. The circumstances of her disappearance pointed to abduction, or worse, and every front page showed her picture – an innocent face glowing with optimism.