Three Steps Behind You

by Amy Bird

  I steady the ladder as he climbs, holding the shaking steel as he pushes his head up through the loft hatch. That’s the most difficult bit, getting in. After that, you’re up, and you’re safe. It’s just coming back down again that’s tricky.

  Nicole is hiding somewhere, still presumably drying out pages, so I go out to the garden to assess the lawn situation while Adam hunts in the loft. I have never mown a lawn before. To me, the grass looks the right length. I get down on my stomach and lie on the ground to examine it. It is like looking at a green giant’s hairy back – the one from the sweet corn pack lying down, letting you lie on top of him. Like with back hair, you can see each individual blade, blow on it gently, create a little breeze. It seems cruel to cut it down. But it’s just like shaving, I suppose. Giving the Jolly G Giant a bit of designer stubble, like Adam’s. Or indeed, like Luke’s. They missed that in the police picture.

  I wonder if it’s different, with stubble. For the person with the stubble, I mean. I know what it’s like to be the stubble-ee. Does each little butt of face hair act as new antennae of sensation, a fresh wave pulsing down to the skin at each touch? Just in case, I should try it. How can I write a stubbly character otherwise, unless I’ve experienced it?

  I remember that Adam is relying on my for his lawn shaving, so I get up off the grass and pull the lawnmower’s tail until it roars at me. I heard that once a man tried to have sex with a lawnmower. I cannot understand this. Never mind the ridiculous risks involved; think too of all the grass mulch and tiny pulverised insects that your penis would be covered in. How could you expect ever to be allowed to put that into someone’s most treasured place again, to feel cleansed and enriched by being there?

  I try to give the green giant as close a shave as possible, taking the garden in straight, narrow lines. The lines carry on all the way from the waistband of my cords, down the legs, the hems, onto the garden: a seamless self-continuation. I get into a rhythm, like you sometimes do with words, like I did with book three: up, down and across we go; up, down and across we go. Up, down and across we—

  ‘Dan!’

  Adam is standing in front of me, waving a violin. It’s a good job I saw him, or I would have mown right over him, pulping him into the ground. I turn off the mower and greet him.

  ‘So when shall we start the lessons?’ I ask.

  ‘Lessons?’

  ‘You’re going to teach me!’ I say.

  ‘Teach you? Christ!’ he expostulates. ‘But I haven’t played for years!’

  Adam is so modest.

  ‘I’m sure you remember everything,’ I say.

  ‘And time – how would I have the time? We don’t all hang round on settlement payouts, you know.’ He slaps me on the back to show he is joking.

  The thing is, I know he wants to teach me, but is just depriving himself. I know he wants it. Just like that girl in the common room. Just like he did, that other night. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t tell the police. So when I say what I say, it is not really blackmail, just encouragement for him. Validation.

  ‘It would give you much more time if Nicole knew about Feltham. I doubt she’d stay, then.’

  Adam looks at me hard. I nod. Someone once told me that if you nod when you want someone else to agree, they will ultimately copy your body movements and give in. So I keep nodding.

  The effect on Adam seems limited.

  ‘You don’t need to worry about Nicole,’ he says.

  ‘But you do,’ I say.

  And I go back to nodding.

  Slowly Adam returns my nod.

  ‘Good,’ I say. ‘We’ll have the lessons at my house.’

  Adam starts to protest.

  ‘You want to keep me away from Nicole, don’t you?’ I ask. I look up at the house, and see Nicole standing at the back bedroom window. She is talking on the phone, but watching us. I touch Adam lightly on the arm, and nod up at Nicole. ‘She’s always watching, you see. I could just mouth something at her now, pop in and tell her. Adam was in Feltham for—’

  Adam puts his hand across my mouth, gagging me. Beneath his hand, I smile. There. We are closer already.

  With our teaching pact made, we can go inside. Adam locks the violin away in its case. I will have to wait until our first lesson to stroke its curves, and to see if they really are lobsters on its front.

  Nicole comes down to meet us. Adam flicks on the TV and mutes it while Nicole talks.

  ‘Dan, I’m so sorry – I couldn’t save the pages,’ she says, as she enters the room.

  This is a disappointment.

  ‘Can I see them?’ I ask. I might be able to decipher what she is not.

  She shakes her head. ‘I flushed them away. It was too hopeless. So you probably want to go now. To mourn.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say.

  ‘What’s this?’ asks Adam.

  ‘I startled Dan earlier, at the Wet Fish Café, made him spill coffee all over his latest book,’ Nicole explains. Adam looks at Nicole. I look at the TV. There is Old Compton Street, and Luke’s picture. ‘He’ll be sad. He’ll want to go home next, won’t you, Dan? Did you have a coat?’

  ‘You were at the Wet Fish Café together?’ asks Adam.

  I think he is asking Nicole but I may as well answer. ‘Yes, we were having a good old chat. Catching up, sharing our secrets.’

  Adam doesn’t react – he isn’t listening. Instead, he is staring at the TV.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, gesturing at the screen. ‘That’s just opposite the place we went the other night!’

  Adam unmutes the TV. DC Huhne’s voice resonates out of the expensive speakers, surrounding me.

  ‘Dan, Nic, look – a girl murdered, the night before we ate there!’

  The night after Nicole and I met there. I look at Nicole to see if she is thinking the same thing. She is still standing by the door, but I catch her eye. She is frowning, so I quickly look back at the TV again. I will have to speak now, or it will seem odd.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘The night after Nicole and I bumped into each other there.’

  ‘Good job none of us were there on the night itself – that would look suspicious!’ Adam jokes, laughing.

  I try to laugh back.

  ‘Have they got a suspect?’ Nicole asks.

  ‘Someone called Luke,’ says Adam.

  Nicole nods. I steal another glance. She is still frowning. The same as her midnight frown, after the dodgems. Except even more intense. It’s a good job she couldn’t save the coffee-drenched pages. I can’t guarantee the absence of Luke’s name.

  ‘Well, don’t let us keep you, Dan,’ Nicole says. She is undoing the locks on the front door, hurrying.

  ‘I don’t have to go; I could stay to dinner,’ I say. But she is holding open the door.

  ‘Show’s over for tonight, Dan,’ she says. ‘Everybody out.’

  ‘What’s the rush, Nic?’ Adam asks her.

  ‘We’ve got plans, remember?’ she says pointedly. I don’t know what plans start at 8 p.m. on a work night.

  I go to Adam and shake his hand goodbye. ‘Don’t forget,’ I whisper. ‘Tomorrow – seven p.m. Bring the violin.’

  I kiss Nicole goodbye on the cheek. She stays stiff and doesn’t return the favour. Odd. I thought we were getting on better now. When I look at her, she is staring straight ahead, and is looking a little pale.

  As I turn to the front door, I see what she is looking at: DC Huhne coming up the front steps.

  Chapter 10

  DC Huhne acts as though it is normal for us to see each other unexpectedly twice in one day.

  But then again, so do I.

  She nods at me and I nod back.

  ‘How’s the case going?’ I ask.

  ‘Early days,’ Huhne says. ‘But we’ll catch whoever did this to her.’

  Almost an exact quote of my words to the journalist. A coincidence? Does she know, now, already, that I knew what I should not have known? No, surely not. I hope.

  ‘Dan was just leaving
,’ says Nicole. Then, ‘what can we do for you?’

  There is a pause. DC Huhne frowns slightly at Nicole, looking confused. ‘But you—’ Then she stops and starts again. ‘Oh, just passing. Thought I’d pop in.’

  Which police officer, newly promoted, just ‘pops in’ at the start of her first solo case out of uniform? Something is being hidden from me. If it’s something about Helen, I can deal with it. I’ve been asked all the questions before and my answers didn’t incriminate me first time round. But what if it’s about Ally? What if they know, suspect?

  ‘Oh, well, now you’re here, you’d better come in,’ Nicole says.

  ‘What about your plans, Nicole?’ I ask. Huhne should know she is not welcome. That she should turn around and leave, not have any dangerous conversations. Dangerous to me. To Luke.

  ‘Bye, Dan,’ says Nicole. Huhne, it seems, is more welcome than I.

  ‘Bye, see you soon,’ I say, looking from Adam to Nicole. Then DC Huhne and I nod at each other again, and I’m off. I wonder how different the conversation will be now I’m gone, what fresh insights Nicole will bring.

  It turns out that Saturdays are best for Adam and his violin. He is just too busy in the week. The days since I saw him and Nicole were spent running round the North Circular, cold showering and writing. Then I’d prepare food for Adam, in case he popped in for an impromptu lesson. That food turned into next day’s breakfast. Wednesday morning I had red Thai curry. Thursday morning I had salmon steaks. Friday morning saltimbocca. Saturday morning I just have cereal because I’d planned to order a pizza for the Friday evening, if Adam came. I called him just before I called the pizza company. We hadn’t spoken all week; he’d been too busy at work to phone.

  ‘Yeah, about that …’ he said. ‘Work’s a bitch right now, mate. I’ve got to have an evening in, catch up on my reading. Count yourself lucky to be out of it.’

  I don’t tell him how much of my settlement money I’ve spent cooking food for him this week. I suppose I have, however, saved on cereal.

  ‘We’ll have to do it another time, mate,’ he continues.

  I offer the next day, Saturday.

  ‘Mate, I’d love to, but …’

  I ask if I can speak to Nicole.

  There is a pause while Adam remembers Feltham.

  ‘What time shall I come round to you?’ he asks.

  So we agree he’ll come round at eleven. Which is an hour. Just time to check the essentials. Book three is in its box, away from prying eyes. Book four, embryonic as it is since Nicole poured coffee all over the original, lies neatly in my rucksack. Book one is out on the dining table, should Adam care to reminisce. I call it a dining table, but it’s really more like an altar, the altar of Adam, high with a long floor-length tablecloth, and candles in the centre. Book one is in between the candles like a bible. Book two is still with Adam – he has not returned it, he cherishes it so much. Also on the Adam altar is a pitcher of juice and some fresh flowers – tulips – to give the house more of a West Hampstead feel. I say fresh, but they are drooping slightly, their once velvety purple petals now drying and curling, looking less inviting.

  In the time I have to wait, I practise air violin. This basically looks like you are aiming a snooker cue upside-down on a very high-up pool table. But it is worth doing. I don’t want Adam to think I am a total novice.

  I have to practise on my own for a while because Adam doesn’t arrive until 11.20. He doesn’t apologise for being late. I know this is because he knows a) we have all day together and b) I would forgive him, so in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter.

  Nor does he go through the ritual of asking if I’ve done something new to the place, or moved furniture. He knows the set-up, has observed each detail before, so we don’t need to go through these motions.

  Instead, he just puts the violin case down on his altar, on top of book one.

  ‘Right,’ he says, snapping open the clasp of the case, with a sound not unlike the snapping of a lobsters claws. ‘Let’s get on with this.’

  He’s curt today, not his usual bantering self. But he’s been working hard, all that night-time reading for work – important papers, I suppose – on top of his day job of talking in glass rooms. I dare say he’s suffering from stress. I must look after him.

  ‘I’m so grateful, Adam, for you helping me,’ I say. ‘Really.’

  He looks at me and opens his mouth to speak. Then he shakes his head slightly.

  ‘What are friends for, hey?’ he asks. He sounds like he genuinely wonders.

  ‘Still,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’

  He doesn’t reply, but pulls out the violin and holds it to his chest, fiddling around with the small black dials on its neck. I imagine Luke doing the same, when he is playing for his lover.

  Luke grasps the neck, twisting tightly. The string gets tauter and tauter as he turns, until finally there is a high-pitched sound. His job is done.

  Yes, I can imagine Luke doing that, in book four, for Nicole.

  Next, Adam tightens up the bow, twisting a small cylindrical moving part at the end of the bow until the slack individual hairs stiffen into one rigid formation.

  ‘There,’ pronounces Adam. ‘Ready.’

  He thrusts the violin at me and instructs me to put it under my chin. I place my chin carefully on its black exoskeleton, so that it is nestling against my shoulder. I look down the body of the violin, past the two sleeping lobsters, the curve of its sides, along the four neat lines of strings, to where my fingers clutch around the neck.

  ‘First,’ says Adam, ‘just grip the neck without putting any pressure on the strings, and we’ll get your bow position set up. It’s all about how you hold your wrist.’ He makes a claw-shape in the air, wrist arched. We stand facing each other, like two lobsters, primed for battle. Except apparently my battle posture is wrong, because Adam seizes my wrist, and twists it up. He twists some of the skin in the process, almost giving me a Chinese burn.

  ‘That’s better,’ he says.

  Then we practise drawing the bow across the strings, one at a time.

  ‘GDAE’ he says. ‘Find a way to remember the order.’

  God Dan Adam Everyone else?

  I scrape across them. The sound is raw, unpleasant. I push the bow, but there is resistance.

  ‘Ah!’ says Adam. ‘Rosin.’ He produces a small amber-coloured, puck-shaped substance from the lid of the violin case, and rubs it up and down the shaft of the bow. He does the same with the spare bow, once he has tightened it. I try to think of more memory aides.

  Give Dan Adam Eternally?

  We both move the bows then, him standing opposite, showing the rhythm and glide I should be trying to achieve. We are our own small orchestra, our bows crossing as we get to the top of our up thrust, like two fencing swords.

  Good Dan Adam Embraces?

  Our bows get out of sync, and Adam stops.

  ‘I meant to ask,’ he says. ‘How’s your aunt?’

  I sound an A and E at the same time, shrilly, like a squeal of pain.

  ‘My aunt?’ I ask, keeping the violin raised between us.

  ‘Yes. You haven’t spoken about her since you visited her, oh, when was it? A couple of weeks before Helen died. Around the time of … my incident.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I confirm. ‘I was in Hertfordshire, that night, looking after her. Otherwise I would have come to see you, look after you.’

  ‘You could have driven back.’

  ‘I don’t drive,’ I remind him.

  ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘Silly me. But how is she? Visited her much, recently?’

  ‘A couple of times,’ I say.

  I think, for a minute, that in this more solicitous mood, Adam is going to push for specifics. Instead, he moves on to teach me how to place my fingers on the violin’s strings to make more notes.

  Which is a relief. Because, of course, I never had an aunt.

  Chapter 11

  Later, on Hampstead Heath,
I try to interrogate Adam about DC Huhne. He didn’t originally want to come to the Heath. He wanted to get home, finish off his reading. Work papers, I assume. Seeing as he’s already read book two. But I told him I’d already made a picnic, we could find a nice secluded spot, and that it was really on his way home.

  ‘So what did she say?’ I ask. ‘Was Nicole giving Huhne her latest theories about Helen?’ I want to add: or Ally. But I don’t.

  Adam shrugs. ‘Maybe. I left the room. There were so many theories, back at the time. None of them brought Helen back. Where shall we sit?’

  ‘Here?’ I ask, gesturing to a grassy area, near to the ponds, beneath a tree. There are no other picnickers at the usually popular bathing spot today. Still, I suppose we’re out of season.

  Adam throws his jacket down on the ground for extra padding and sits down.

  ‘How long did she stay for?’ I ask, unwrapping the sandwiches.

  ‘Jam?’ says Adam. ‘What are we, fourteen?’ But he picks one up and begins eating it anyway. The jam smears the edges of his lips. I move to wipe it away with kitchen roll, but he has already removed it with the back of his hand.

  ‘So, Huhne,’ I say. ‘Little Debbie Huhne. How long was she there for?’

  ‘Oh, Debbie, is it now? Someone got a crush?’ He elbows me in the ribs to show he is joking.

  ‘Hardly,’ I say, rubbing my ribs. It was a harder elbow than the joke warranted. I think there’ll be a bruise.

  Adam tears at his sandwich.

  ‘How long was she there for?’ I repeat.

  He shrugs. ‘Half an hour?’

  I tilt my head from side to side. ‘That’s quite a while to talk about Nicole’s mad theories.’

  ‘Maybe they’re not so mad,’ he says. ‘Her theories about you.’

  I look at him.

  ‘Well, you don’t have a great alibi, do you?’

  ‘I didn’t know I needed one,’ I say.