A burly man shoved the others aside. He wore heavy workman’s clothes and boots. He waved a misshapen green bottle in one hand.
“You bitch! I’ll teach you to go on the game.”
He threw the bottle at Rhian, who screamed and ducked, putting her arm in front of her eyes. Once she started screaming she couldn’t stop. It seemed to agitate the specters until they crowded around her, cajoling, pleading, demanding, threatening.
“No, no, leave me alone, please,” she said.
A door banged and someone gripped her by her right arm. She fought and tried to pull free, the wolf clamoring within her.
“It’s all right, love. You’re all right. There’s no one here but us.”
Her arm was pulled from her eyes and she found herself looking at the ticket man, who held a bulky black pistol in his right hand.
The spectres had gone.
“Do you need a doctor, love? I can get you one at the next station.”
“I’m okay,” she said, trying to catch her breath and failing, panting with exertion.
“You’re having a panic attack and hyperventilating. Breathe into this.”
He spoke calmly, as if to a child. He produced a paper bag and got her to breathe into it. She wondered vaguely if paper bags for hysterical girls were standard kit for SAS men. After a few moments, her frantic panting eased and she lowered the bag. She looked at his gun pointedly and raised an eyebrow. Nobody carried guns in London, not the police and certainly not ticket inspectors.
It was his turn to blush and he put the weapon out of sight in his shoulder bag.
“I, ah, heard the screams and thought you were being attacked.”
“I must have had a nightmare.” She said the first thing that came into her head and cursed that it sounded so lame. “Sorry.”
He grinned at her. “No harm done, love. Do you have a phone number? Just so I can check later that you are okay.”
“No,” she lied, suspecting that his concern wasn’t entirely altruistic. In other circumstances she might have found the young man’s interest flattering, but she was not looking for a new relationship. It was far too soon after James.
He pulled an old receipt and a pen out of his pocket and wrote something down, giving it to her.
“You can always give me a call if you’ve another panic attack and need someone to bring round a paper bag. I have a great bedside manner.”
I bet, thought Rhian, but she rewarded him with a smile and put the number in her pocket so as not to appear rude.
The train finally pulled into a station and the doors slid open. Rhian grabbed her bags and fled the train in embarrassment. On the platform she organized herself, putting her rucksack on. When she was ready, she looked around to find out where she was. A tube sign announced that this was the Mile End Station.
The station was clean and modern looking, which surprised Rhian. She had always lived in the western suburbs since she had first come to London, and she had accepted western prejudices about the East End. She could wait for the next train, but the incident had shaken her. Maybe this was fate? Maybe she was meant to get off here? She could continue eastwards later, by bus if she could not bring herself to get on another tube.
Rhian struggled up the steps to the ticket hall and out onto the street, blinking in the sunlight. As usual, the clouds had vanished without disgorging water. She bought a local paper from a sales booth at the station entrance. The headline was something about another body being found. She had not bought the paper for the news, so she ignored it.
The Mile End Road opposite the station was impassable on foot, with dual carriageways separated by railings. So, being too tired to struggle along the pavement with her bags until she found a pedestrian crossing, she turned behind the station into the maze of small streets. She came to high walls with a sign indicating Tower Hamlets Cemetery. On the corner, where Hamlets Road ran into English Way, was a traditional London pub. Traditional in the sense that it was run down, with faded paint and rotten woodwork. Not traditional in the sense that it had been given a spray-on makeover by a design consultancy.
A tatty sign, which looked as it had been used as a target for spent beer bottles, admitted that the premises were called the Black Swan. A smaller, newer sign proclaimed that one Gary Hunter was the licensee. Inside the furnishings were equally worn but surprisingly hygenic. Rhian dumped her bags by a table and went to the bar. She was served a by a clean-cut man in a striped rugby shirt. He was quite old, in his thirties, but fit. Perhaps the rugby shirt was not just for decoration.
“What’ll it be, love?” he asked.
“A large Coke and two packets of plain crisps, please,” she said.
“One ninety-five.”
She sorted the money from the change in her purse and carried her purchases back to the table, sitting on the bench seat that ran along the front wall under the windows. She sipped the Coke and ate the crisps greedily.
“You were hungry,” the barman said.
“I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
“You want to look after yourself or you will become all thin and anorexic. You know what happens then, don’t you?” the barman asked.
“No,” she said, supplying the required answer, like a straight man in a comedy duo.
“You have your picture taken wearing expensive clothes. You get on TV, marry a footballer and become seriously rich and famous, especially when you divorce him for sleeping with the entire cast of Girls Behaving Badly. Of course, it helps if you had an abusive childhood as well, but you can always get your PR people to invent something.”
Rhian nodded and smiled at him before unfolding the newspaper and turning to the letting page. Taking out a biro from her bag, she went carefully down the list of adverts, putting rings around likely prospects. When she had finished, she slipped her mobile out of her coat pocket and dialed the first number.
“Hello, I’m ringing about the room. Oh, it’s gone? Sorry to have bothered you.”
The second number did not answer, so she dialed the third.
“I’m ringing about the flat share. Your advert in the paper says you are looking for a girl? Oh, you have one. Sorry to have troubled you.”
And so it went on, until she was near the bottom of the page. Rooms to let went quickly in London and the paper had been published a few days ago. She dialed again without much hope.
“I understand from your advert in the paper that you need a female flatmate but I suppose it’s gone? No! I could come round right away to view it. How far is Vernon Road from the tube station? Right, number three-A, I’ll be there in an hour.”
Rhian felt far more relaxed now. However bad the let was, she would take it until something better came along or she moved on. For a while, she had thought that she might have to find a woman’s hostel for the night. She hated sleeping in hostels, as she always seemed to get the roommate who snored or worse. She remembered one who tried to get in bed with her. The next day the woman insisted that she was sleepwalking and remembered nothing of the night’s activities. Rhian had moved out nonetheless.
She opened the second packet of crisps and settled down to enjoy them. The door to the gents flew open, banging against the wall. A middle-aged man lurched out, weaving unsteadily between the tables. He must have been in the toilet for the entire time that she had been in the pub. The barman stopped cleaning glasses and watched warily.
The man sat down beside her on the bench seat. His closeness made her uneasy, since he had the choice of the entire pub. She ignored him and went on with her breakfast. He leaned over, blearily looking at her newspaper, clearly finding it a challenge to focus on the print.
“Looking for somewhere to stay, girly?” he asked, obviously noting the ringed adverts. “You can come back to my place if you like.”
He leered at her, guffawing at his own wit, and put his hand on her thigh.
Rhian panicked.
“Don’t touch me,” she screamed, pushing the drunk awa
y.
Fear of what might happen if she lost control lent power to her voice. She could not bear to think what might happen if she lost control. Her Coke went over in the scuffle.
“I’ve warned you before about bothering girls in here.”
The barman appeared out of nowhere. He seized the drunk by the scruff of his neck. Pushing him to the door, the barmen threw him out into the street.
“You’re barred,” the barman said.
He stood for a while, making sure the drunk was really gone, then returned to Rhian’s table.
“You spilt your drink,” the barman said to her. “Hold on and I’ll get you another.”
He dashed back to the bar and, leaning over it, hosed out another coke from the dispenser into a clean glass. He brought the drink back and handed it to her.
“You’re trembling,” he said. “Honestly, he’s not dangerous, just a stupid drunken pest. Would you like a brandy?”
“No, thank you,” she replied.
Alcohol could be disastrous when she was upset. The barman sat with her for a while, apologizing all the time.
“Are you still looking for staff?” she asked, partly to deflect him. She pointed to a sign on the wall above the bar.
“Yes,” he replied. “It will only be temporary, I’m afraid. The brewery intends to gut the place and make it into a student theme pub. I believe that the current plan is to do it out as the bar scene from Star Wars.”
The two of them looked at each other and shuddered simultaneously. Rhian giggled with genuine humor, something that she had not done for a while. It felt good.
“Students!” they said, together.
“I have to find somewhere to stay,” Rhian said.
“I overheard you,” said the barman. “My name’s Gary, by the way. I’m the manager. If you want the job then come back this evening. I won’t even hold being Welsh against you.”
“I may take you up on that,” she said. “The job, I mean.”
CHAPTER 3
FRANKIE
The various editions of the A to Z are the Londoner’s bible. The pages contain a comprehensive index and grid map to every street in the vast sprawling city. Rhian used it to find a subway under the dual carriageway and followed its guidance in the maze of streets north of the tube station. Vernon Road was a cul-de-sac, which ran off a side road that came off another side road in a sort of spiral. She followed the roads around, taking the route that a car would have to follow. She suspected that there would be a shorter footpath somewhere, but the A to Z did not always see fit to show those.
Vernon Road consisted of rows of four-story terraced houses that were at least a century old, Edwardian or maybe Victorian. They had been originally built for the wealthy middle classes. The front door was up a flight of steps, under which were what had been servants’ quarters. Of course, over the years the properties had all been converted into small flats and blocks of bedsits. The wealthy middle classes had long since fled the city and moved out to the rural bliss of the Home Counties around Greater London.
She scanned the newspaper to remind herself of the exact address and checked off the numbers on the houses as she walked down the road. Number three was right at the end; there did not seem to be a number one. The house was behind a handkerchief-sized, but neatly cared for, front garden. Three-A was the basement flat. It had its own front door at the bottom of a small flight of steps to the side of the building.
Rhian knocked on an ornate and truly hideous brass knocker shaped like a lion’s face. After a brief pause the door swung open, decisively propelled by a tall woman in a long skirt and blouse in autumn colors. They were cut in an “East European peasant style” that had been fashionable a couple of years ago. She peered at Rhian through large strong glasses that completely distorted her eyes. She looked old to Rhian, almost as old as Gary.
“You must be the girl about the room?” the woman asked in a middle-class southern English accent.
“Yes,” Rhian replied.
The woman cocked her head on one side, causing light brown frizzy hair to drift across her face.
“I thought you were Welsh when I spoke to you on the phone,” she said, looking at Rhian’s dark hair.
Rhian sighed. She had worked hard at losing her Welsh lilt in exchange for a typical London accent, but everyone still identified her as from the valleys after only a few words.
“That’s an interesting door knocker,” Rhian said, for want of anything more intelligent to say.
She felt a strange aversion to the knocker that surprised her. Why an inanimate object should bother her so was a mystery. Its blank bronze eyes stared at her as if alive. She almost had a compulsion to make her excuses and walk away.
“It’s a copy of the 1154 a.d. Norman sanctuary knocker from the north door of Durham Cathedral,” the woman said, with the pedantic precision of a scholar.
“I see,” said Rhian, who did not see at all. It was beyond her why anyone should go to the trouble of fitting such a monstrosity.
“If you rapped on this knocker to request entry and confessed your crimes, then you were absolved of sin and allowed to go free. Have you any crimes that you wish to confess?”
“I don’t think so,” Rhian replied, smiling politely.
“Come in anyway,” said the woman.
Rhian’s air of unease evaporated as if an invisible barrier had been removed, and the woman ushered her into a long corridor with high ceilings. The knocker was just an inanimate lump of metal moulded into an unattractive shape. All the rest was her over active imagination.
Like most London properties, the house was much deeper than wide, the layout allowing builders to cram in as many properties as possible along the street.
“My name’s Francisca Appleyard. Everyone but my mother calls me Frankie.” She held out her hand.
“I’m Rhian Jones.”
Rhian took the woman’s hand, consciously making herself squeeze. A supervisor had once cruelly told her that she had a handshake like a dead haddock. It was part of his petty revenge for being turned down.
“Drop your bags here and I’ll show you around,” Frankie said. She pushed open the first door on the left. “This is the lounge.”
The room was comfortably furnished with a sofa and a red leather swivel chair. The furniture looked expensive but was showing signs of wear. Light came in through a large window, which opened onto the basement well at the front of the house. Looking up, Rhian could see the small garden and the street. Net curtains prevented people on the pavement from looking in, so the window was like a two-way mirror. A bulky TV set stood in a corner away from the window. It had been an expensive state-of-the-art device when new but was now obsolete. Rhian had the impression of declining fortunes, or maybe Frankie had bought second hand. Bookcases and cupboards lined the walls right up to the ceiling.
“You would have free access to this room,” Frankie said. “I am the only other person in the house. This is my bedroom here.”
She pushed open a door to a room at the rear of the house that was larger than the sitting room. A double bed took pride of place in the center. This room was lined with shelves carrying books and strange objets d’art. Rhian was struck by an ornate mask carved from polished dark wood.
“Nor’ombo chieftain’s death mask,” said Frankie, following Rhian’s gaze. She clicked her tongue in the middle of the name. Rhian wasn’t sure whether the woman was making a joke. Rhian put a polite half smile on her face, as she didn’t want to appear stupid.
Frankie drew back long ceiling-to-floor drapes at the back of the bedroom to reveal French windows.
“The garden out there is mine as well, and you are welcome to use it. I am afraid that the only way in is through my bedroom, but that shouldn’t be a problem during the day. I like to sit out and read in good weather, but I advise you not to sunbathe au naturelle. The old boy upstairs has a pair of binoculars and is a bit of a perv. The bathroom is over there,” Frankie said pointing to
a door on the right. “There is another door into it from the hall.”
She took Rhian back out into the hall to demonstrate.
“The kitchen is in here,” she opened the door on a modern kitchenette with wall-mounted storage, “and this is the guest room.”
The spare bedroom door wouldn’t open fully because of the bed in the way. Frankie had to slide round it, moving further in so that Rhian could follow.
“It’s a bit small,” Frankie said, defensively, “but it’s warm and cozy, and you’ve the run of the rest of the flat.”
The room was indeed small; the wardrobe doors couldn’t be fully opened either because of the bed, but it was warm and freshly decorated in bright, friendly colors. A window at the end let in natural light and gave a pleasant view of the garden.
Something strange happened to Rhian in the little room. She saw the world in color again for the first time in ages as if someone had switched on a floodlight. No, that was not quite right because she had recognized colors, distinguishing red from green, but emotionally they had all been shades of grey. Her world had been shades of grey since James—she bit down on the emotion—since the terrible night she lost James. Something about the little room lifted her soul.
“The room is lovely,” said Rhian, genuinely pleased.
“Good! Let’s have a cup of tea and discuss terms,” Frankie said.
Rhian sat on a stool in the kitchen and watched Frankie go through the English tea ceremony. She used a large china teapot shaped like a country cottage.
“The rent is three hundred and eighty pounds a calendar month, about ninety quid a week. Is that okay? It does include everything.” Frankie said, anxiously, watching Rhian carefully.
Rhian considered. It would be tight, but the bar work would tide her through until she could find a better job. She smiled at Frankie, “That will be fine.”
“I’d like one month’s rent in advance as a deposit,” Frankie said.
“Oh!” said Rhian.
She took out the envelope and counted the money twice. However she rearranged the notes, she could not make the deposit.
Wolf in Shadow-eARC Page 2