by Sam Baker
They said dogs could smell fear on you.
Well, Helen thought, dogs had nothing on people. There was a type of person, usually a man, in her experience, for whom fear was a magnet. That man could spot fear from the other side of a packed room, from the other side of a packed city. If you were really unlucky, he might be the type of man who liked to nurture fear, create it where previously there was none, then feed it to amuse himself.
A man who was attracted to light, only to snuff it out.
Art Huntingdon was that type of man.
Mark Ridley was Art’s best friend. If she and Art had separated in the usual way, then she would have lost contact. That was the way it went; friends divided down the middle like belongings, the friends that came with you into the relationship left with you. Mark came with Art. His sidekick, his partner in crime. At least he had been. Helen hadn’t seen him for over a year; couldn’t recall Art mentioning him in months.
She wandered the backstreets of Marylebone and Bloomsbury for the next hour, trying to find her fleeting sense of wellbeing and belonging. She scoured the pavements in search of them. They weren’t there. London felt lost to her now. Her insane plan of maybe visiting a gallery – Tate Modern; she’d entertained ideas of the Turbine Hall – finding a restaurant and being that woman, the one who sat in the middle of the room, not at the edge, paperback propped on the salt cellar … Her plan was as hollow as her gut.
It was impulse that made her do it. That and the pain in her ankle. As she turned the corner on to Euston Road from Coram’s Fields, a modern block loomed on her left. A sign in the Premier Inn’s window advertising rooms for £39. She knew it would end up costing more, it always did, but she could stretch to that. Exhaustion overwhelmed her. The promise of hot water, Wi-Fi, walls that weren’t stained with damp and carpets that didn’t feel sticky under her feet, the silence of a new build with nothing to say, was too much to pass up.
Six months ago – even six weeks – she couldn’t imagine having considered this place a sanctuary, but she’d stayed in far worse. The receptionist was polite but disinterested, heedless of her absence of luggage and the puffy redness that must have ringed her eyes; paying cash didn’t pose a problem and he didn’t demand a credit card for extras since extras weren’t an option. She paid a £10 surcharge to guarantee a room with a bath. It was worth every penny.
The room, when she reached it, at the far end of the corridor by the fire escape, was basic but comfortable. A small rectangular window, like every other small rectangular window in the building’s façade, looked out on to Euston Road and the British Library on the far side. Below, traffic snarled and she cranked shut the double-glazed panel, pulling the blackout blind to shut it out, and with it what remained of the daylight. Slipping her laptop from her backpack, she put it on the desk along with the Evening Standard, and scoured the instructions for getting online. The luxury that was Wi-Fi, she’d almost forgotten.
Double-locking the door, Helen checked under the bed and in the wardrobe before turning on the TV; dozens of channels and a reception so sharp it was startling. The normality calmed her. A bed, a bath, four walls, only one door. Magnolia paint and mass-produced paintings. What could be safer? In the time it took to run what would have been an hour’s worth of hot water at Wildfell, she kicked off her trainers and socks and sat on the loo seat massaging her swollen ankle and cursing herself for not thinking to buy a support. When the bath had run, Helen sank gratefully into the bubbles and tried to push the day’s events from her mind, everything but the white noise of a game show cackling from the TV next door and the occasional ping of the lift.
When the water started to chill, she dragged herself, waterlogged but still pink with heat, from the tub, wrapped herself in a warm towelling robe, made herself a cup of faux posh instant and ate both packets of complimentary biscuits. Flipping open her laptop she logged into her VPN via the hotel Wi-Fi, before downloading Helen Graham’s two webmail accounts. There was nothing, of course. Why would there be? Nobody knew the accounts existed. And yet the spam was there. How did they do that?
There was no alternative, she’d have to go back into her own Gmail account. Chewing the inside of her lip, she double-clicked.
Fran’s name leapt out at her, dated yesterday. Subject line: News.
Hi Helen
I don’t know whether to assume my emails aren’t reaching you, or you’re just not replying. I guess I prefer to go with the former. Anyway, something happened that I thought you’d want to know. You remember Art’s friend Mark?
Helen spilled lukewarm Kenco on to the white towelling robe. Mark. Twice in one day? Even twice in two days, it didn’t add up.
… He said we’d met at your wedding, not that I remember to be honest, I was so pregnant. Anyway, he was ever so cut up about Art and seemed desperately worried about you, so I emailed to say I’d spoken to you …
Closing her eyes, Helen did the distraction thing Caroline had taught her, counting as she pushed the nails of her right hand hard into the flesh of the palm until she felt them begin to cut.
Apparently he has some stuff of Art’s you might want? Anyway you should call him. Call me, email me, something. I’m worried about you.
Love Fran x
Helen’s first urge was to run. She could throw on her clothes, check out and be at King’s Cross in less than five minutes. Safe back at Wildfell by one a.m. Two at the latest. Indoors, with the doors locked … The hotel dressing gown was on the floor; one leg in her jeans, before Helen caught herself.
What, precisely, would that achieve?
Barricaded in Wildfell, where, she hoped, no one could find her – and even that was feeling less certain by the moment. Forcing herself to sit on the bed, Helen breathed slowly. Started counting down from one hundred, intoning the numbers aloud into the room.
Ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six … A documentary about food burbled to itself from the small, flat screen above the desk.
Eighty-nine, eighty-eight, eighty-seven. A siren wailed on Euston Road.
Seventy-six, seventy-five, seventy-four … The person in the room above turned on the shower.
Gradually her voice grew louder, more confident, drowning out the babbling in her head, the blood roaring in her ears. Flight not fight. When had that become her default response? What would teenage Helen say if she could see her older self now? Sitting alone in a hotel room, repeatedly checking the locks and scared of her own shadow.
She wouldn’t recognise me, Helen thought. I don’t recognise me.
By the time she reached zero, Helen was in control. She would spend the night here, as planned, and try to regroup. Art was dead, it was entirely reasonable for Mark to be upset; upset and worried. The way Tom was worried for her. Tom had dropped in on her mum, then called her sister. Mark had emailed her. Of course he had, he was a journalist, getting people’s contact details was second nature.
Both sachets of instant coffee gone, Helen resorted to PG tips and turned her attention to the laptop, typing in two words for the first time since the fire: ‘Art Huntingdon’.
The browser spun for a few seconds and then screeds and screeds of links started to appear on screen. Art’s journalism, reports and front-line notes from Afghanistan had been syndicated the world over, Iraq less so, Syria not at all. But still the hits went into the hundreds of thousands. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, Foursquare. He even had a LinkedIn page. When had he set that up? None of the photographs were recent. Six, seven years old or more. Showing him younger than she remembered. Thinner, with more hair, before age and career disappointment removed the arrogant flash of good looks.
An arresting black-and-white image brought her up short. He was leaning against a tank, in fatigues, wiry dark hair sticking up, hooded eyes staring directly into the camera. It was his expression that unsettled her, mocking, combative. There was no softness in his gaze, no flirtation. Only confrontation. Helen knew the picture all too well. She’d
taken it. Although she hadn’t felt entirely comfortable about it even then.
After ten pages and a glance at all the social media pages she could access, she’d confirmed what she’d already known. There was nothing at all for the last three weeks. For the weeks before that, she could tell you what he’d eaten for breakfast and what colour socks he’d worn.
How exposing it was to live life on the web was one of the things they’d argued about. Not argued, exactly. Arguing with Art was unwise. More, disagreed. Art believed his Internet presence was a sign of his place in the world, a way of recording his true worth. His accumulated value was not in the zeroes on his bank account (although he prized those too), but in digital dollar signs. Helen thought differently. Still did. There had been a time when she’d agreed with him. Not about money, she’d never cared very much about that; obviously, or she’d have had more. The status, though. Professional respect. Winning awards. That much had mattered.
They said war reporters were the surgeons of the newspaper world. It was the adrenalin surge of having other people’s life stories in your hands, she supposed. Her response had always been the same: if reporters were the surgeons, then photographers were the snipers; high maintenance, aloof, riddled by doubt and driven by certainty.
And she hadn’t known back then, hadn’t worked out for herself, that there were two types of war reporter anyway. Maybe more, but she’d definitely met the two. There were front-line journalists that were out there to make a difference and the war junkies. Art had always been good at selling himself as the first …
The balance of power had been off from the start. Not the very start, as Art saw it, back when Helen was a rookie photographer and Art, ten years her senior, was already on his way to greatness. In his head, that was the start of everything. Seven years before they actually did. And it was that … time-lapse, that made him superior. She owed him, he joked, that night in Baghdad, for her very first front page. Without him, she’d never have been in Soho the day the nail bomb went off and never got that image. Beginner’s luck, he insisted on calling it. Just as she owed him for the one she’d got earlier that day. It passed him by that there had been dozens, if not hundreds, of front pages for her in the intervening years. But he was so convincing, she’d half believed him.
He never tired of telling people how they met on her first job, casting himself as her champion and mentor. It was a role he relished. Within weeks of that first meeting, the one she barely remembered, he got his longed-for move to the foreign desk. Then 9/11 happened and Art became a name. A picture byline. Beating off job offers, industry accolades and sexual favours with a stick.
Or not beating them off. With the benefit of that telescopic lens known as hindsight, Helen finally understood why, after they got together, his sheets were always fresh the morning she returned from a trip.
By the time they met again, seven years later, Helen had gone from ‘lucky beginner’ to front-page regular. They’d make a great team, Art said, as he lay in her bed that night, painting a picture of mutual glory. But Art hadn’t wanted a partner, not really. He wanted a handmaiden. As Helen’s Google pages grew and his faltered, their relationship took the strain. The only difference being that when you searched ‘Helen Lawrence’ you didn’t get her. Well, not much. You got her pictures.
It was around then Helen had started to wonder if the true mark of success wasn’t invisibility. If the seal of a good journalist or photographer wasn’t obscurity. How can you tell a story if the story simply becomes you? Art’s growing obsession with social media tipped her over the edge.
You had to be a force to live life off-line, she told Art one evening. It required power to erase yourself from the world’s search engines. They were sitting in the window of a bistro he liked behind Rue de Rivoli. In her head, Helen could still see the frontage, the stainless-steel tables covered with white paper tablecloths. She’d erased its name though. Imagine, she’d said, waving her fork as she warmed to her theme. Imagine having a lasting body of work that existed entirely beyond the name attached to it.
Only the truly great could ever achieve that.
Paris was quiet, that night. Winter settling in. A couple of tables of locals and that was it. The tourists began to vanish at the point it became too cold to huddle under a heater at a pavement table, holding a Gauloise in frigid fingers and looking convincingly like it passed for fun on Facebook.
It was only when silence crowded in that she looked up from her omelette. Art’s steak was running red on his plate, a familiar cloud darkening his face. He laid down the serrated knife and looked at her. Blood pooled with oil in a lake of Dijon. He didn’t speak. Just stared, his face expressionless, cold and hard. Nothing human behind the eyes that she could see. As though she had devalued his entire life’s work in a single sentence. It didn’t occur to him for a second she might have been talking about herself, her work, her dreams.
‘I …’ she started. ‘I wasn’t … I didn’t mean …’
But he just stared, face white, lips a tight, narrow line, silencing her.
15
It wasn’t Gil’s imagination. When he next went into the shop, Mrs Millward was definitely giving him what could only be described as a look. If anyone should be bestowing ‘looks’, thought Gil as he bought his daily pack of B&H and made a point of ignoring her questioning gaze, it was him. Looks in his repertoire this morning might have included, How did you get my mobile number? Who the hell do you think you are, handing it to a total stranger? What made you think this was a good idea anyway? He was being old-school, Gil knew that. But mobile numbers weren’t things you gave to just anyone. Not like landlines. Mobile numbers were personal.
Friends, families, colleagues.
Mind you, then no one would ever call him. The sourness of that thought made Gil feel better, but it didn’t solve his problem. What to do about the Liza woman? He’d liked the look of her well enough. What he’d managed to remember, anyway. She’d been friendly, well turned out. It had been a while since he went out with anyone. Truth was, he couldn’t think of a good enough reason not to.
Hi Liza, he tapped, once he was safely outside. That sounds nice. Gil. Pressing send, he immediately regretted it. Nice? That sounds nice? He shook his head, vaguely aware he looked like a mad man muttering to himself in a shop doorway. Less than five steps further down the street his phone buzzed.
Great, how about dinner Thursday? 8 p.m. at Genarro’s? I can pick you up if you like? Lx
Was it too late to pull out? He could always say he was busy this week, maybe next. Find an excuse next week to postpone it …
Oh, what the hell.
Sounds good. I’ll pick you up. What’s your address? Gil.
He pressed send. The message bar was only three-quarters gone when he realised that in the space of three texts, an invitation for a drink had turned into a dinner date, with ‘picking you up’ and, therefore, ‘dropping you off afterwards’ on the menu. For the first time since Jan left, he felt the cold chill of the single man of a certain age on the rocky shores of dating. Gil shuddered.
It wasn’t that there hadn’t been other women.
There had, several. Donna, Meg, Maureen, Linda, the temp who’d covered in HR (that had been drink for both of them), Angela, Chrissie … He stopped running through the list in his head. More than five, less than ten. Only Donna and Angela had been more than a couple of drinks and a warm bed for two lonely people of a certain age. It had surprised him, at first. Not to be too pleased with himself, but he’d expected to be beating them off with a stick. Single, not bad-looking, decent job, own place … He wasn’t short of offers. Just not like that. Most of that list were even less keen to settle down again than he was.
‘God no,’ Maureen had said. Or was it Linda? ‘Got my house, my kids are gone. Eat what I want when I want; watch what I want when I want. If I have my way, I’ll never do anyone else’s washing again.’
This, Liza, felt a bit different. It didn’t fee
l like a drink, dinner and a bit of what Donna had euphemistically called companionship. It felt like she was after more. It felt like she meant business. Gil wasn’t sure he was in the market for business. He’d just reached his front door when a thought occurred to him.
‘Back so soon, Mr Markham?’ said Margaret Millward, when the bell above the door brought her from the stockroom.
‘Forgot to pick up some bits.’ Gil ducked down an aisle to escape her beady stare. It wasn’t easy, his head towered a good foot over the top shelf. He scanned the shelves, trying to remember what Helen Graham had picked up last time he saw her. Milk … the red label, he thought, skimmed stuff. The stuff that didn’t taste like milk at all, changed the colour of the tea but that was all. Bread. Fresh loaves had just been delivered so he picked something crusty. She didn’t seem the sliced white type. Earl Grey. She hadn’t bought tea bags so he would … And nice chocolate. Well, as nice as the General Stores could provide. Then he scoured the fruit and veg and settled on a bunch of purple grapes.
‘Visiting the sick, are we?’
‘What makes you …?’ Gil looked at his pile on the counter. The bloody woman didn’t miss a trick. It was like some long-forgotten memory had kicked in. Not the bread and milk, so much as the fruit and chocolate. He was only short of a bunch of flowers. ‘Not really,’ he muttered. ‘Just short of a few things.’ As if to prove the point, he picked up a can of beans he didn’t need and wouldn’t eat from a nearby shelf and added them to the pile.