by Nicci French
Stuart had left two messages – one sober, one drunk – and although I’d promised myself I’d call him back, I hadn’t got round to it. He was that kind of man: the one you quite like, the one who’s quite interesting, quite good-looking, yet oddly diffuse. He talked a lot and I could never remember precisely what he’d said. He drank a lot, and then all his words ran together in a stream that trickled over me.
‘Holly!’ he said now. ‘It’s Stuart, the one you ran away from and the one whose calls you haven’t been returning. I haven’t taken it personally.’
Drunk, I thought. ‘Hi, Stuart.’
‘What are you up to?’
‘In general?’
‘In the next hour or so.’
I opened my mouth to say I was busy. In reality I was tired, but I wasn’t busy. Charlie was out for the evening. With a woman, for all I knew. I had no plans. I wasn’t tired. I was restlessly agitated. A woman in search of adventure.
‘Why?’
‘I’m going to a poker game at a friend’s house, just six of us or so, and I thought it might be fun if you came as well.’
‘I haven’t played poker since I was at college. I can play animal snap and racing demon and patience, and that’s about it.’
‘I don’t think the others would like that much. You don’t have to play, though. You can watch us and drink whisky and blow smoke-rings.’
‘That sounds fantastic fun,’ I said. ‘Watching six people play cards all evening.’
‘You’ll come, then?’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Great. I’ll pick you up in an hour from your office.’ And he was gone.
‘Why not?’ I said aloud.
I saw Meg watching me from across the desk and I looked away. After all, she wasn’t my mother and I was only going to watch a card game for a bit. What was the harm in that? I got up from my chair and went into the ladies’, where I stood in front of the mirror and painted my lips red. I pinned back my hair in an elegant bun and raised my eyebrows at myself. I wanted to look like a femme fatale in a noir film of the forties, standing in a stairwell with slabbed shadows falling across my face. I wanted to wear stiletto heels and a tight skirt and shrug nonchalantly at pain and danger.
13
I heaved my tins of paint into the back of the cab and clambered in after them. When I looked back on this evening in the days that followed, this was the last part I remembered as a coherent whole. I sat in the cab with Stuart and his friend, Fergus. Stuart was cheerful but wary. I think he was surprised I had come but he must have remembered that our visit to the exhibition had taken an unexpected turn. I couldn’t make out Fergus’s face clearly in the gloom, but I could see he was thin, loose-skinned, sharp-boned.
He held out a cigarette and I took it and, in the sudden flare of the lighter, saw his cadaverous face. For a moment I thought of telling the driver to stop and let me out, but the moment passed away – or, at least, it passed into me. I almost felt it fall through my mind to lodge deep inside me.
‘Where are we going, then?’ I asked.
‘Wandsworth.’
‘I don’t know Wandsworth.’
From then on the evening was like an old and damaged piece of film footage. The sound comes and goes, sequences are in black-and-white or projected at the wrong speed, images are blurred, entire scenes are missing. Of the house, I only remember details: an enormous plasma TV screen, a leather sofa, a trashy ‘tastefully erotic’ picture on the wall – a woman peels a stocking from a long white leg, a man watches from the shadows. In the kitchen there is a fridge of gleaming stainless steel.
A group of men is already there, five of them, drinking Scotch. All are in suits without ties, except one. He is a fat, florid-faced man in a suit with a tie. It’s his house and his poker game. Two younger men are talking loudly. One is Fergus. The other is Tony. Stuart told me about Tony in the taxi on the way over. He runs a building company but Stuart gave me a wink and said he had other interests as well.
‘You mean criminal?’ I said.
Stuart laughed. ‘Tony doesn’t exactly operate through normal channels,’ he said.
Stuart is evidently eager that I’m aware he knows someone like Tony. When Stuart introduces me boisterously to him, he hardly speaks. He is tall, broad-shouldered. I shake his hand. It is large and rough. He looks at me curiously for a moment. I am the only woman there. I feel the exhilaration of escaping into another world, where different things are done.
They are playing poker. There is no money on the table, just brightly coloured discs in stacks. I stand behind Tony’s shoulder. I have a drink in my hand, ice clinking. I walk round the table looking at the cards. I like this. The murmur of bidding, frowns of concentration, technical talk. It’s coming back to me. I know this game. I used to be good at it.
Stuart is sitting on the other side of the table. He tells me to come over and give him luck. I say that I can see fine from where I am. Stuart is talking about me possessively. If any of the men think that I am his girlfriend, he is saying nothing to correct them. He tells me I look like a gangster’s moll. I have been thinking the same myself and the idea amused me but when it’s spoken aloud it doesn’t seem funny any more.
A mobile phone rings. Tony leaves. Something requires his attention.
There is an empty chair at the table. Now it’s not empty because I’m sitting at the table. I’m playing. Stuart gives me a puzzled look. He says he thought I didn’t play poker and wouldn’t it be better if I stuck to looking decorative? He’s very much one of the lads now, nothing like the sensitive soul I sat up with late into the Oxfordshire night. I take a long time at first, staring at the two queens in my hand. Do I dare to stay in? What should I bet? Stuart says something I can’t quite hear and the men all laugh. Then he tells the story about my buying the sculpture and somehow connects it to getting me to make up my mind, urging me to hurry. The men laugh again. I feel my cheeks burning.
At least it’s better than coming too quickly, I say, looking over at Stuart. At least, that’s what you tell me. The other men find this very funny indeed. They’re laughing loudly and joshing Stuart, jabbing at him. He doesn’t speak.
I feel a lurch in my stomach. I’ve got back at Stuart all right, but I may have got back at him too much. I take someone’s glass and finish their drink in one gulp. I feel a jolt like an electric shock. I feel better. I feel number.
It’s all so easy. I have my own colourful heap of chips. I arrange them in order. It all goes perfectly. I throw away three cards and get another queen. It beats everybody. My heap is bigger now, overflowing. Later, I don’t know how much later, I get three of something again. But I don’t win. Somebody has something better. My pile of chips is gone.
I’m playing and then I’m not playing. Stuart is gone now. He’s nowhere to be seen. I’m sitting on the leather sofa. It’s all seemed like the biggest joke. I’ve been the gangster’s moll, flirting and smoking and drinking and dangling on men’s shoulders while they play cards. Then I was something else. I was the naughty little sister joining in with the big boys, playing with their toys. It was the biggest joke, funnier and funnier, like those times when you were a girl with your best girlfriend and you got the giggles and you giggled and everything that happened made you giggle more and you thought you would laugh for the rest of your life until you died. Then the laughter started to hurt, yet you were afraid to stop laughing. Now I’m sitting on the leather sofa, which stings my thighs, drinking another drink and I have a feeling that there are things about this that are not funny at all. I don’t know the people here and I don’t know how to get home and I don’t think I’ve got any money left. Money. Yes, there’s that. There’s something that somebody said after a few hands didn’t go so well. Somebody said a figure: nine thousand pounds. That’s what I owe. That can’t be right. I was just playing. I just came with Stuart.
I’m drinking so I won’t be able to feel any more. Someone next to me passes me a cigarette and lights it for me. I draw the smoke d
eep into my lungs. I feel blurrier and blurrier. I think of my tins of paint. Where are they?
I’m accident-prone, always have been. I break glasses, bump into things. If I’m cutting up vegetables, which I hardly ever am, then I’m as likely as not to push the blade into my thumb. So I’m well used to anaesthetics in casualty departments as well as dentists’ chairs. The thing about an anaesthetic is that it doesn’t abolish pain. It just picks it up and puts it away in the corner where it doesn’t bother you. You can even feel that hurting is going on somewhere. I knew somewhere there was a bit of me that wasn’t having such a good time and that when everything wore off none of me would be having a good time.
Tony leans over me. ‘All right?’
I just stare at him.
‘We should go,’ he says. ‘Game’s over.’ He helps me up and leads me out of the room.
‘I’ll drive you,’ he says.
‘My paint,’ I say. ‘I need my cans of paint.’
‘Forget about your paint.’
14
‘Where to?’
I stared at him. Where to? Where could I go now? I gazed out of the window. It was still dark, although there was a smudgy grey on the horizon, and I saw both the empty, lonely streets outside, and my own face staring back at me. I pushed my hair back behind my ears and pulled my skirt down over my knees.
‘Where do you live?’
‘I don’t want to go there,’ I said dully. ‘Meg’s. That’s it. Meg.’
‘So where does Meg live?’ he asked patiently.
‘Oh. Sorry, yes. Ventura Street. Near Marylebone Road. You have to go…’
‘I know the area. I used to work there.’
‘Where do you work now?’
‘Building site near Tate Modern. You don’t want to know that, do you?’
‘Not really.’
‘There’s a blanket under the back seat.’
‘A blanket?’
‘You’re shivering. Wrap yourself in it.’
We drove in silence and, after a few minutes, crossed the river. Tony’s Mercedes nosed its way smoothly along the streets, its headlights picking out black bin bags in piles on pavements, ready for collection, the skeletal plane trees waving their branches, the low slink of a cat into the shadows, a man in a trench-coat walking slowly. There was traffic as well, more than I expected. Sometimes I closed my eyes, but when I did that I felt as if I was dying and my whole garish life was unrolling, and sometimes I stared out of the windows at the ghostly city moving towards me, rushing past me, and every so often I glanced across at Tony as he drove, a cigarette hanging from his lip.
‘You’ve got to direct me from here.’
When he pulled up outside Meg’s flat, I wanted to get out of the car and leave without speaking. But there was something I had to say.
‘When you were gone, I – I shouldn’t have, I joined the game. I don’t really remember it properly. But I lost some money. Quite a lot.’
Tony lit another cigarette. ‘Yeah. I heard.’
‘It was all a mistake.’ I waited but he didn’t speak. ‘What do I do?’
He took a deep drag on the cigarette and let the smoke spill out of his mouth. ‘Pay it,’ he said.
‘I’m not sure if I’ve got the money.’
‘You can always find money.’
‘I don’t know who to give it to.’
‘Contact Vic. Or he’ll contact you. Doesn’t matter which.’
I’d thought Tony would rescue me from that. I got out of the car. I could almost feel the damp of the pavement through my shoes. Tony waited while I rang the bell. A minute later, after I had rung a second time, I could hear a shuffling and then the chain slid back. Her face peered out of the gap, puffy with sleep.
‘Meg,’ I said.
‘Holly? What on earth…’
‘Can I come in?’
‘Sure, sure.’
A rattle of chain, the slide of metal on metal, then the door opened and Meg was there, clutching at the neck of her thick grey dressing-gown.
‘What the fuck?’ she said. She peered at my face. ‘Are you all right? What’s going on?’
I turned and waved at Tony. He gave a nod and his Mercedes purred away.
‘I see,’ said Meg. Her face had become expressionless.
‘Let’s go up,’ I said, and as we mounted the stairs I addressed her stiff, disapproving back. ‘I’m sorry to wake you. I didn’t want to go home right away.’
‘I can understand that,’ said Meg, in a cool voice that made me want to sit on the stairs and put my head in my hands.
‘Things have gone a bit wrong,’ I said, as we reached her warm, familiar flat.
‘I’ll make coffee,’ she said. ‘Then we can talk about it.’
‘I can’t talk about it. I’m too tired.’
Meg rubbed her eyes, ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Have a shower,’ she said.
‘I’m in trouble, Meg.’
‘I know.’
Dread filled me, top to toe. What did she mean, she knew? How could she know? I didn’t want her to be looking at me with her shrewd eyes. I didn’t want anyone to look at me. But eyes are everywhere, wherever you go, and you can’t hide yourself, or your dirty secrets and your shame.
‘I’ll have a bath,’ I said weakly, and shuffled into her bathroom, where the radiator was humming.
I had a hot, deep soak, then got dressed in a pair of black cords and a soft pink shirt that I’d given her for her last birthday. Meg even gave me a little toothbrush she’d saved from her last long plane journey so I could clean my teeth. I avoided looking in the mirror. I was scared of my own face, and the eyes that would stare back. I had to stand quite still, holding the wash-basin and waiting for the horror to slide back inside myself, where it could grow and flourish in my private darkness.
‘Here, coffee,’ said Meg.
I tried to pick it up but my hands were shaking so much that hot liquid splashed on to my skin and I had to lower it again and, leaning forward, sip from it like a dog.
‘Something to eat?’
‘No, I couldn’t.’
At that moment I couldn’t believe I’d ever eat again. I would starve and purify myself until at last I was empty and clean, like a child just starting out, not grubby and defiled by life.
‘So,’ said Meg, putting her chin on her hand and gazing at me.
‘I’ve been stupid.’
‘That man?’
‘No, he just gave me a lift back.’
Meg raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything. She was waiting for me to speak, to tell her everything.
‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘Sorry. I need to talk to Charlie. I should say it all to him first. I’ll call a cab and arrange to meet him.’
Meg nodded.
‘That sounds like a good idea.’
I wanted to say, babyishly, Please be my friend still. I nearly did, but Meg, sitting opposite me with her tired, grave face, seemed so grown-up, so sorted-out, so remote from me and my messy, ugly problems that I could scarcely bring myself to believe we were friends and partners, two women who understood each other’s language and who could read each other’s faces. Far, far away.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said lamely. ‘Meg? I’m sorry.’
There was a long silence, in which I could hear myself breathing hoarsely. I picked at the fabric of the pink shirt and saw that I’d bitten my nails further down, though I couldn’t remember doing that. I waited. ‘There is no light at the end of this tunnel,’ I said to myself. ‘This tunnel goes on and on and things are roaring towards me in the darkness.’
At last Meg looked at me, as if she’d made up her mind about something. Then she spoke. ‘I can’t do this any more.’ Her voice was hard, with nails in it. Her face was hard as well.
‘What do you mean, can’t do this? Can’t do what?’ My own voice was a croak, like a crow up in a high tree.
‘Go on taking your behaviour. Do you think it’s all I’ve got to do
with my life, clear up your messes?’
‘I don’t know what you–’
‘Do you ever think about me? Or Charlie? Or anyone except yourself? Don’t bother to answer that. Of course you don’t. The world revolves around you and your stupid desires. You think you’re wonderful, don’t you?’
‘Not at this moment, really–’ I began.
‘With your long hair and your big eyes, fluttering your thick lashes, you think everyone will just fall over backwards to help you, don’t you? Help you when you’re in trouble, and forgive you when you let them down. Because you never mean to. You’re so impulsive, aren’t you? So spontaneous and reckless, that’s what you say to yourself.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What do you think it’s like for me? There you are, centre stage, showing off, and it’s good old Meg, always there, behind the scenes, unnoticed, picking up the pieces, making sure everything’s smoothed over.’
All the resentment she’d been storing up was spilling out now. I knew there were things to be said in reply. I’d been working seven days a week up to twenty hours a day for almost a year. I’d done so much of the hard stuff, getting the clients, working with them, but it all felt too tiring. It didn’t matter. Meg was in full flow.
‘Holly, you should look at yourself. You sacked a woman just because you felt like it, and now we’re having to deal with the fall-out. You slept with a man who’s now ringing the office and hassling people. You charm clients or you insult them. You fall asleep at your desk or in the toilets – don’t think we don’t notice – and then go out all night. You’re like a baby, picking things up that catch your eye and dropping them when you get bored. You’re being foul to Charlie as well.’
‘Charlie’s my business,’ I said wearily. ‘Just because you–’ I stopped abruptly and actually put a hand across my mouth to hold back the words.
‘What? Just because what? Say it! I know what you were going to say. Just because I fancied him once. I did. It’s true, and you knew it. But he fancied you, because men always do, don’t they?’