The Other Side of the Door

by Nicci French

  ‘It was your idea.’

  ‘It was a stupid one.’

  Before

  Hayden was crying in my arms. He was crying like a baby cries, he was crying the way he made love and the way he ate and the way he laughed – with abandonment and a lack of self-consciousness that astonished and moved me. I held him against me and I felt how emotion was making his entire body quake. He gulped and groaned and bit by bit he calmed down until at last he was lying still and heavy, like a dead man. I stroked his damp hair and bent to kiss his shoulder.

  ‘Do you want to tell me?’ I asked at last.

  He sat up and used the hem of my shirt to wipe his cheeks. ‘That’s better,’ he said, as if he’d had a long drink of water after great thirst.

  ‘Hayden?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘What was that about?’

  ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘Hayden?’

  ‘You were going to cook me that meal, weren’t you? You even brought your mother’s old cookbook with you. You’ve never cooked for me before. I like firsts.’

  ‘You might not like this one.’ I stood up and put on the apron I’d also brought – I was wearing a pale grey sleeveless dress I’d picked up on a market stall that morning and didn’t want to ruin it with my incompetence. ‘Sea bass with spices I’ve failed to buy so we’ll have to do without, and rice. OK? Don’t you want to talk about it?’

  ‘I want to eat. I’m ravenous.’

  After

  The phone rang and rang. In my dreams, it was the sound of bells. I was trying to walk up a hill towards a small grey church but was hardly able to move. I realized I was in a wedding dress, but one that was ripped, badly fitting and covered with mud, and I was trying to reach Hayden, who was standing near the entrance with water streaming from his hair and a rug around his shoulders. He was smiling at me, or maybe grimacing, but however hard I tried, I couldn’t reach him. My legs dragged. The bells became louder and more insistent, pealing out. I forced myself up out of the sheets and reached for the phone, fumbling in the darkness and still half tangled in the dream. I barely knew where I was, who I was. I found it and lifted it, jabbing at the buttons to answer, but the sound continued and I realized it wasn’t the phone after all. Someone was ringing the doorbell.

  I stumbled out of bed and went to the front door, which I opened. Everything seemed unreal. Neal’s face, looking at me through the gap, seemed unreal, something from long ago.

  ‘We’ve got to talk,’ he said.

  ‘What time is it?’ I felt jet-lagged – perhaps I’d slept for many hours and it was the next day, but it was dark outside, or as dark as it ever gets in London, not even a band of light on the horizon.

  ‘I don’t know. Let me in.’

  I stood back, suddenly aware that I was wearing just an old singlet over some knickers.

  ‘Wait here,’ I said in the kitchen, and went into my bedroom for jogging pants and an old top that covered me properly.

  ‘I had to see you,’ said Neal, as I came back into the kitchen and sat down opposite him.

  ‘You only just saw me. Remember?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘You should have been sleeping instead.’

  ‘I was sleeping, and then I woke with a jerk. Do you ever do that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it occurred to me.’

  ‘What did? Hang on.’ I stood up and opened the fridge. ‘I need something to calm me down.’ I pulled out a carton of milk. ‘Do you want some hot chocolate?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Whisky?’

  ‘No. I need to keep a clear head. So do you.’

  I poured the milk into a mug and drank it cold. ‘That’s better,’ I said. ‘Now. Why do I need a clear head?’

  ‘Look.’ He handed me a piece of paper. ‘Talk me through this,’ he said.

  ‘Am I still dreaming, or didn’t we already do this earlier?’

  ‘Go on, look,’ he insisted.

  ‘This is Sonia’s list.’

  ‘I want to check that our memories coincide on this.’

  I started to read the list out loud. ‘Really, it’s all pretty straightforward. Sonia’s got more things because she’s got a bigger brain than I have. But I’ve no problem with any of it. I only have a problem with you waking me in the middle of the night to go over it again. Because I’m tired, Neal, I’m so tired that I feel as if everything’s fraying inside me.’

  Neal leaned forward with his elbows on the table, rubbing his head with his hand as if there were an itch deep inside that he couldn’t get at. ‘What about those two sculptures?’

  ‘I remember them,’ I said.

  ‘But they weren’t on your list. I’ve got that here. Look.’ He leaned down and pulled the sheet of paper out of the canvas bag he’d brought with him, waved it at me as if he was trying to attract my attention.

  ‘I remember them now,’ I said. ‘They went out of my mind when I was trying to think of things. I’m really amazed I got as much as I did. What is this?’

  ‘Describe them to me,’ said Neal.

  I looked back at the list and made myself concentrate.

  ‘One of them was a sort of grey-metal abstract thing. It was like two figures with something over them, a cloud or an umbrella.’

  ‘What about the other?’

  I looked again at Sonia’s mention of it. That was harder to remember but it was vaguely familiar.

  ‘It was a kind of rough-textured vase. Was it bronze? It had a sort of greenish tinge, like old metal statues. And I hate to say this, but I’ve got a feeling that it had breastlike protrusions. I suspect it was meant to echo the female body.’

  ‘That’s very precise,’ said Neal. ‘Why didn’t you put it on your list?’

  ‘I told you,’ I said. ‘It was like the other sculpture. I didn’t put it down because I didn’t remember it.’

  Neal nodded his head slowly, many times. I gazed at him, wondering if he’d finally gone mad. There was a new glitter in his eyes, a sense of contained excitement.

  ‘It’s not like the other sculpture,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘It’s not like the other sculpture,’ he said. ‘You didn’t remember the first sculpture because you forgot it.’

  ‘Well, exactly.’

  ‘But you didn’t remember the second sculpture because it wasn’t there.’

  I looked down at Sonia’s list, written in her neat, bold hand. This made no sense to me.

  ‘What do you mean it wasn’t there? How do you know it wasn’t there? Of course it was there. Sonia remembered it. I remember it now – kind of. I’ve described it to you. Are you all right?

  Neal leaned down again and opened the flap on the bag at his feet. He removed a bulky object and placed it on the table.

  ‘It wasn’t there,’ he said, ‘because it’s here.’

  ‘Here?’ I said stupidly.

  ‘Look.’

  I looked. A vase in the shape of a female body. Ugly. Who’d want to put flowers in that?

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. My tongue felt thick in my mouth; I shaped the words with difficulty. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

  ‘I took it away.’

  There was no doubt about it. That was the vase. The vase with tits.

  ‘Why? What’s it doing here now?’

  ‘It’s the wrong question – not why, when.’

  ‘When?’ I asked obediently, although I still didn’t understand why that was the right question.

  ‘On that evening, Bonnie – on August the twenty-first, the day Hayden was killed – I took it away because I thought it might have been the murder weapon. It was lying there on the carpet in the patch of blood. It’s got that funny handle thing on it. I imagined that someone – you, Bonnie, yes, you – during a row might have picked it up, lashed out, caught him on the head, killed him.’ He looked at me. ‘I know you remember the vase, because y
ou saw it when you were there with Hayden, or maybe when you visited the flat before. And I know why you didn’t put it on your list. Maybe because you’ve got a bad memory or, even more probably, because it wasn’t there. Now do you understand?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No. No.’ I wanted to cover my ears with my hands, or curl up in a small, tight ball. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ His voice was calm and patient, as if he was trying to explain something to a particularly stupid child. ‘You didn’t remember it was there. But I remembered it was there. And Sonia remembered it was there, the first time.’

  I could hear the words Neal was saying but they were only partially making sense.

  ‘What do you mean, the first time?’ I said.

  ‘The first time,’ said Neal. ‘Earlier in the evening. When she killed Hayden.’

  Before

  Days often seemed like nights with Hayden, when we would draw the curtains or pull down the blinds, tug the sheets over our heads and explore each other in our own twilight world, the sunlight pouring down unheeded outside and the birds singing in the plane tree by the window. And nights could merge with days, losing all boundaries, because Hayden didn’t keep to the same hours as other people and didn’t even have an approximation of a structure. He didn’t own a clock or a watch, and though he had the time on his mobile, he rarely if ever checked it. He ate when he felt like it, slept when he was tired, had difficulty keeping any appointments, including appointments with the band – the only reason he turned up for rehearsals as frequently as he did was that I was often with him.

  For him days and nights, the passage of time itself, the fall and lift of darkness, were like a great river that was carrying him along: sometimes drifting into the shallows, sometimes flung into the fast-moving centre, sometimes wallowing luxuriously in the slow currents, but never striking out with purpose. He would sleep two hours, or seven, or fifteen; eat once or five times in what served as his day; drink wine at eleven in the morning and eat cereal at midnight; make no plans and then triple-book people.

  That night, after his weeping fit, he ate my sea bass (burned) and rice (gluey with overcooking) as if he was saving himself from starvation, washing it down with cold tea and tepid wine. Then he said, ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

  ‘It’s nearly two in the morning. I’m dog tired.’

  ‘I need to expend some energy. And it’s still warm, warm as day. Look, the moon’s nearly full.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I dunno, wherever our feet take us. Come on.’

  ‘I need to change into something more sensible.’

  ‘No – just put your shoes on.’

  ‘I need to get my stuff.’

  ‘Leave it here.’

  We walked down through Camden, past Regent’s Park and into Bloomsbury. There were still a few cars on the roads, and a straggle of pedestrians on their way somewhere – London is never quite empty, never quite silent or dark – but as we walked over Waterloo Bridge it felt as though we were the only people awake in the whole vast and glittering city. The moon shone on the river and we could hear the small waves smacking against the shore. The clock on Big Ben showed four. Hayden walked fast, not talking. He looked young and purposeful, striding out as if he was heading towards a particular goal. His face in the moon- and lamplight was smooth, quite peaceful. We turned off the bridge and walked eastwards, along the Embankment, under the shadow of empty, monumental buildings. Now there was a faint band of light on the horizon and birds were singing in the trees. He turned and suddenly smiled at me, held out his hand for me to take, and I was filled with a surge of happiness so strong it made my chest ache.

  Still we didn’t talk. We went back across the river at Blackfriars but with one accord stopped in the middle to look out at the City.

  ‘I think I’m going away quite soon,’ Hayden said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah – time to head off.’

  ‘Where?’

  I didn’t look at him, but down at the water beneath. Beside me, I felt him giving a shrug.

  ‘Somewhere else,’ was all he said. ‘Something’s come up. Anyway, maybe I need a change.’

  ‘What about the wedding?’ I forced my voice to remain absolutely neutral.

  ‘Wedding?’

  ‘That we’re rehearsing for.’

  ‘I’ll probably stay around for that.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘What do you see, Bonnie?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  He took my chin in his hand and forced me to look at him. ‘Nothing lasts for ever.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come on.’

  And we set off again, no longer holding hands, and the light came up and the shutters rose on newsagents and the traffic thickened. We stopped in a working-men’s café in Farringdon, and Hayden ate fried eggs on toast and I drank coffee. Before we reached my flat, he left me. He said he had things to see to.

  After

  ‘You’re being ridiculous,’ I said. ‘It’s not possible.’

  ‘It has to be.’

  ‘Sonia?’ I stared at him. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘She could only have remembered the vase if she’d been there earlier in the evening.’

  ‘Maybe she saw it before.’

  ‘Had she ever been to the flat before?’

  ‘No.’ I remembered she had claimed she didn’t know where the flat was. I’d met her on Kentish Town Road and shown her the way.

  ‘There you are, then.’

  ‘The fact that she was there earlier doesn’t mean she killed him.’

  ‘Why has she lied?’

  ‘Why did you lie? Why did I?’

  My brain was working slowly and ponderously. I could feel facts clicking heavily into place; interpretations rearranging themselves. I had called Sonia to come and help me get rid of the evidence of Neal’s crime – but it was her crime. She had come and helped me get rid of her own evidence. Or I had helped her. Together, we had cleared away every clue she had left behind. I stared wildly at Neal. ‘It can’t be true,’ I said. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘Let’s go and find out.’ He stood up, decisive and full of new authority.

  ‘Now?’ I said stupidly. ‘It’s still the middle of the night.’

  ‘Yes, now. What – you want to wait until morning?’

  ‘No – but she’ll be with Amos. She said she was going there.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, what about Amos? We can’t just – well –’ I stopped and put my head into my hands. I felt as though my brain was hissing.

  ‘Ring her mobile. Tell her we have to see her.’

  ‘She’ll think we’re mad.’

  ‘Unless I’m right. You’ll see.’

  I picked up my mobile and scrolled down to Sonia’s number. ‘What shall I say?’

  ‘Tell her we know what happened and we have to see her at once.’

  I pressed the dial button and waited. The phone rang and rang. I pictured Sonia curled up next to Amos.

  When she answered, her voice was thick with sleep.

  ‘It’s Bonnie.’

  ‘What is it?’ Now she would be struggling into a sitting position, turning away from Amos so as not to wake him.

  ‘I have to see you.’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Now she would be outside the bedroom, closing the door. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’

  ‘It’s four o’clock. I’m with Neal and we need to see you at once.’

  ‘Why?’ Did the tone of her voice shift?

  ‘We know what happened.’

  ‘You want me to come and see you?’ Sonia still sounded quite calm. ‘The Underground isn’t running.’

  ‘We’ll drive to you.’ I looked at Neal and he nodded his approval. ‘Neal’s car is here. We’ll be waiting outside Amos’s flat. Ten minutes.’

  ‘All right. Ten minutes.’

  Neal drove and I gave directions, then looked out of the wind
ow. It was foggy, although later the sun would burn it away. I thought about Sonia, her competent, practical kindness. I closed my eyes and for a moment let myself feel how very tired I was. Yet I was full of a restless, churning energy that made it difficult to sit still.

  And then there she was, standing on the pavement in a belted mac, her hair tied back.

  Neal pulled up. She opened the back door and climbed into the car. For a few seconds no one spoke.

  ‘Well?’ Sonia said at last.

  ‘Let’s drive to the canal,’ I said. ‘It seems a bit odd to be sitting outside Amos’s flat to talk.’

  Sonia sat back and folded her hands on her lap. I told Neal where to go in a voice that sounded absurdly formal. The three of us were like awkward acquaintances. It was impossible to say anything at all except the huge unsayable thing that was squashing the air out of the space.

  The car stopped. Neal turned off the headlights and the ignition. He coughed loudly and then I coughed as well.

  ‘Spit it out,’ said Sonia.

  I twisted round to face her, made myself look at her full on. ‘Neal found the vase.’

  ‘Vase?’

  ‘The vase you remembered was there, except it wasn’t. With breasts.’

  ‘Breasts?’

  ‘Yes. You remembered it but it wasn’t there.’

  ‘You got me out of bed for that?’

  ‘The point is that you remembered there was a vase and I didn’t remember and then later Neal realized it wasn’t possible . . .’

  I glanced at Neal. I was making a mess of this.

  ‘You were there before,’ Neal cut in. ‘That’s what Bonnie’s trying to say. We know you were. You saw the vase lying on the floor, but later I took it away with me. You were there before Bonnie and before me.’

  ‘But you pretended to be surprised,’ I said. ‘You pretended you’d never been there.’

  She looked calm, far calmer than me or Neal. ‘What do you want me to say?’ she said.

  ‘You lied,’ I said. ‘You were there. You knew everything and then – then you let me believe you were shocked but trying to help me.’