by Roberta Kray
‘True,’ she muttered thoughtfully. ‘If me numbers come up, I can always leave the country, can’t I? Hop on a plane and disappear.’ At this heart-warming prospect she cheered up considerably. ‘Yeah, that’d teach the bastard …’
Still grinning, she reached down and picked a carrier bag off the floor. ‘Got something here you might fancy.’
Eve shook her head despairingly as a selection of expensive cashmere jumpers spilled out across the table. ‘Christ, Sonia, how old are you now?’
For a second she looked aghast, as if stunned by the question. ‘Forty-seven,’ she eventually declared huffily, lowering her heavily mascaraed eyes and flattening out the creases in her tiny skirt. ‘Why are you asking?’
Nearer fifty-seven, Eve suspected, absorbing the deep lines, the crow’s feet and the harshly dyed black hair, but she had the good grace to look convinced. ‘I mean, do you really want another stretch inside?’
They both stared down at the stolen sweaters.
Sonia paused for a moment, pulled a face and then started to laugh. ‘Blimey,’ she chuckled, rocking back in her chair, ‘who rattled your cage? You found God or somethin’?’
‘No,’ Eve riposted, grinning back, ‘but I don’t want to end up visiting two of you. Terry’s more than enough.’ She buried her face in the steam from the tea. It wasn’t the crime that offended her, only Sonia’s susceptibility to getting caught. She’d been nabbed twice in the last three weeks and only escaped charges by the skin of her teeth.
Sonia flapped her left hand in a vague dismissive gesture while with her right she lit another of her endless cigarettes. Inhaling deeply, she blew out the smoke in a long narrow stream. ‘Oh, don’t worry about me, ducks. I can always talk me way out of a tight spot.’
And that might be true. If there was one thing to be said, she could certainly spin a yarn, a touching tale to melt the hardest of hearts. On the last two occasions, she’d probably had the manager and all the staff crying in the aisles – but she wasn’t going to get away with it indefinitely.
Good luck, as Terry had learned to his cost, didn’t last forever.
‘I mean it, Son, you have to be more careful.’
‘I am careful,’ she insisted over-brightly, missing the saucer and flicking her ash all over the cloth. ‘It’s been fifteen years since I did a stretch. Clean as a whistle, I am. Just trying to make an honest living.’
Eve smiled as she turned over one of the jumpers, her fingers drawn towards the soft warm wool. It was a classy black number with a row of pearl buttons along one shoulder. Black always looked dramatic against her hair. And dramatic might come in useful if she was going to …
She glanced up at the clock on the wall and noticed the hands moving gradually towards a quarter to seven.
Would he ring?
He must. He had to!
Frowning, she looked back down at the jumper, still in two minds. If she bought it, wouldn’t she be encouraging Sonia to keep on with her mad kamikaze shoplifting expeditions? But if she didn’t, she’d only be condemning her to endless nights down the pub trying to flog the goods to someone else.
She gazed up at the clock again.
Sonia, thinking that she knew a hint when she saw one, rose reluctantly from her seat. ‘I’d best get back. Val’s coming round with the kids.’
Eve raised her eyebrows. More like Val was coming round to dump the kids; her daughter used Sonia as an unpaid babysitting service, dropping off her sprogs and frequently disappearing for days on end. She glanced back down at the jumper. ‘How much do you want for this one?’ While she waited for an answer she rummaged in her purse and took out forty quid. It was half of what it was worth but twice as much as she’d get for it down The Bell.
‘That’ll do lovely,’ Sonia said, her eager hand briskly palming the notes. Before any change might be considered, or even worse demanded, she quickly turned away. ‘See you later, sweetheart.’
As she heard the front door click shut Eve released her breath in a sigh of relief. It was almost worth paying just for the silence. She was fond of Sonia, amused by her, but if she was being brutally honest she was as much an unwanted legacy as the space she was currently sitting in. Standing up, Eve wandered through to the living room and gazed around. The dull walls, once a pale shade of moss, were stained with age and nicotine. She’d only come here to clear the place, to pack up her father’s belongings, and to hand the keys back to the landlord. And if it hadn’t been for Terry she’d have done exactly that.
‘You can’t,’ he’d declared, his wide eyes becoming tearful. ‘Please, Evie, don’t do it without me. I want to be there.’
She had never taken him for a sentimentalist but then prison did unusual things to people. It wasn’t as though there was even much to sort – only the clothes in the wardrobe, the untidy desk with its overflowing papers, the rows of orphaned books. But Terry had been so insistent that she’d eventually agreed. Why not hang on? It was only for a few months and the rent was cheap enough.
So now she was stuck, at least for a while. The flat was in a small shabby block, uncared for and neglected, tucked away in the back streets of Norwich. Anonymity at least was guaranteed. She still missed London but for all her reservations she had to admit that there were some advantages to living here. It was closer to the jail, a leisurely fifty-minute drive rather than a three-hour haul. And, all things considered, she was better off staying away from London, keeping her head down until that unfortunate business with Henry Baxter’s family had subsided.
But that didn’t mean she was happy. Far from it. She missed the city she’d grown up in, missed its familiar streets and distinctive smells, missed her friends, her routine, her sense of belonging. She was a stranger here. Most of all, she missed her father. It wasn’t easy living with a ghost. Everywhere she turned he was lurking, a regretful shadow at her shoulder.
Would he approve of what she was about to do? A sharp uneasy breath escaped from her lips. She ran her fingers across his desk as if from that dull scarred surface she might absorb some psychic inspiration. He had always been braver than her – but never reckless, never too careless of the consequences.
She glanced at her watch. It was already past seven.
Was Cavelli making her wait, making her sweat, or was he not going to ring at all?
Turning away, she hurried back to the kitchen. She snatched open the cupboard door and took out the bottle of brandy, poured a generous measure, added ice, and for a moment stared intently down into the glass. As she slowly drew it to her mouth, she wondered what she would do if she didn’t hear from him. No, she didn’t want to think about that.
Instead, Eve thought about her father. She had no idea what she’d been doing when he had filled his pockets full of stones and walked into the river. Something mundane, she imagined, like making coffee or watching television. Why hadn’t she realized? It tore at her conscience that she hadn’t felt anything profound, that the event wasn’t marked by the instincts of a sixth sense, by a soaring, a sinking, not even by an inauspicious prickle on the back of her neck.
It wasn’t right.
She still couldn’t quite accept that he was dead. The fact lay like a cold leaden weight in the pit of her stomach. That he was dying, yes, she’d understood quite clearly, but that had seemed a distant prospect, a tiny cancerous dot looming on the horizon, threatening but not yet close enough to be truly menacing.
Eve walked back into the living room and touched the desk again. Aimlessly, she tidied some of the papers into a pile, trying not to stare too hard at his neat sloping script. Notes. He was always making notes, mainly about the authors he admired. His tastes were eclectic: Hardy, Forster, Fitzgerald, Chandler …
She slid his slim silver mobile, discharged and blankly grey, into a drawer. Then she picked up three packs of playing cards, still wrapped in cellophane, and placed them neatly in a cubby hole. He might have hankered for more but games were what her father had excelled at. Especially
poker. Especially cheating at poker. Perhaps, when she was feeling up to it, she might lay out a hand or two … but not tonight. She wasn’t in the mood for any final goodbyes.
Then, as she was about to move away, she noticed the edge of a small green slip of paper lodged between the pages of a magazine article. She pulled it out but might not have given it a second glance if it hadn’t looked so oddly familiar. A few days ago she had come across a similar green square in the cutlery drawer in the kitchen. That one, as her father had a tendency to leave his notes everywhere and anywhere, she had virtually ignored – in fact, in some vain attempt to pretend she was coping, she had actually screwed it up and dropped it in the bin. But this scrap, identical in every way, she took some time to study. It was three inches square and in its centre, written in bold black ink, was what she was sure was the very same sequence of letters and digits: W1/267/32/BC/8PR.
Eve gazed long and hard, her brow furrowing as she tried to make sense of it. Not a phone number. Or the number for a safe. Or a bank account. She reached for her brandy again and sipped it. Maybe some kind of postal address? Her eyes instantly lit up. Now that seemed plausible – W1 covered Soho, her father’s old hunting ground, and the scene of many a triumphant con.
Then she scowled. It was nothing. Why was she even thinking about it? She was only grasping at straws, hoping for some message, some hidden mystery, something that might bring her father back to her. Stupid! But still she carefully folded the piece of paper, over and over, until it was the size of a fingernail and she could thrust the tiny package deep inside her jeans pocket.
Then she sat back down and waited for the phone to ring.
And waited … and waited.
It was after eight before it sprang into life. Eve jumped, her anxious fingers hovering, doubt biting at her nerves. Should she? Shouldn’t she? Eventually she snatched up the receiver and yelped, ‘Yes?’
‘Martin Cavelli.’
Short, sharp and to the point. She waited but he had nothing more to add. Her heart was thumping, thrashing against her ribs. She was tempted to fall back on politeness, to thank him for ringing, but instead swallowed hard and took another swig of brandy. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘You are talking to me,’ he replied drily.
She frowned down the line. ‘Face to face,’ she insisted. ‘Can you send me a visiting order?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Why shouldn’t you?’ she retorted smartly. If there were two things she had learned about men it was never to let them walk all over you … and never to explain.
‘What’s this about?’
She sensed his curiosity and smiled. ‘I’ll tell you when I see you.’
‘I can always ask Terry.’
‘Ask away, but you’ll be wasting your breath. He doesn’t know anything.’ She lowered her voice confidentially. ‘This is between you and me.’
There was a short electric pause before he replied. She could almost hear his thoughts ticking over, could almost feel his eyes roaming slyly over her body again.
‘I’ll think about it,’ he murmured.
‘You do that,’ she said, ‘but don’t wait too long … I’m not the patient sort.’ And before he had a chance to respond, she abruptly hung up.
Her hand was trembling, jittering against the sides of the glass, as she lifted the drink to her lips again. Her palms were damp. Tiny drops of perspiration leaked on to her forehead. Now it was done she felt more afraid than she had before. If she blew this, if she lost her nerve, Terry would be the one to suffer.
‘Well?’ she asked aloud to the empty room. ‘You got any better ideas?’
But there was only a resounding silence.
She spent an anxious week, worried at first that he would send the visiting order, then fretting that he wouldn’t. Her hopes were beginning to fade when the envelope finally slid through the door. There was no message inside, only the stark official slip. Well, that suited her fine. She liked to keep things simple.
She rang and booked a visit for Wednesday.
Today was only Monday. What to do in the meantime? She fancied a trip back to London, lunch with a friend, perhaps even some retail therapy, but decided against it. Best to stray on the side of caution. But unable to stand being stuck inside – the walls of the flat were starting to close in on her – she grabbed her coat and headed for the street.
There was a chill breeze and she walked with her head down, her chin buried in the front of her coat. It was fifteen minutes before she reached her destination, the gateway to the old cathedral, and she spent a moment gazing up at the tall golden spire before suddenly deciding not to go in. It might hold too many memories of her father. Instead, she cut through the side streets to the main city square and took temporary shelter from a shower in the covered market. Perusing the book stalls, the clothes and the jewellery, she felt glad to be amongst people again, to be gently jostled by the crowds.
Once the rain had eased she set off along the quaint winding alleys, exploring the surrounding shops. She stopped by the window of a recruitment agency. It was a gruesome thought but she really ought to consider a job, some temp work to keep her ticking over. There was still money in the bank – Henry had been generous with her severance pay – but it wasn’t going to last indefinitely.
Eve smiled at the memory of him, his grey head bent over his desk in the dim and dusty basement, looking industrious but his mind somewhere else, thinking … thinking of what? And for a second as she gazed blindly at the rows of white cards, at the endlessly tedious ‘job opportunities’, she wished that she was back there with him, that she could step once again into the closeted safety of that calm and quiet room.
There would be no Cavelli to think about then.
She shuddered, resenting the invasion of his name, and tried to think of pleasanter things.
There was plenty she had liked about Henry Baxter, not least the way his eyes lit up whenever he saw her. She could see them now, brightening, turning from pale brown to gold, as if they were lovers – although they were not. Had never been. It wasn’t sex he had wanted from her; he had made that quite clear from the beginning. No, that was not his motivation. And even now she couldn’t claim to know exactly what it was, could only sense it vaguely, as if she were a door he might walk through, an entrance or an exit, some portal anyway that would take him temporarily from this slim unsatisfying world to another of more generous and interesting proportions.
Perhaps, like her father, he had only craved escape.
And maybe, for a while, he had found it in their late lunches, their dinners, their stolen Sunday walks and rambling conversations. She frowned into the pane of glass. What had they talked about? She had told him more than she should but was not afraid of repercussions. All they had said had been spoken in confidence and Henry Baxter’s lips, she was certain, were sealed as tightly as her own.
The rain had started again, splashing around her feet and seeping into her shoes. It was the beginning of May but still felt more like November. She raised her gaze to the grey forbidding sky. It had been inevitable, of course, that it would all come crashing down. Good things didn’t last. And people gossiped, especially those with nothing better to do. A respectable, ageing, married businessman ‘out on the town’ with his much younger secretary was naturally cause for comment – especially when she was a slender, cynical, dangerous redhead!
Still, those seven months they had shared had been good. She looked back on them now with an increasing sense of loss. And it struck her with a sudden and almost aching ferocity that she had loved Henry Baxter, loved him in that way that people never talked about, with a feeling that had nothing to do with lust or sex but everything to do with another kind of nakedness.
But she had lost him as surely as she had lost her father.
Not that they were similar. Not at all. Alexander Weston had been witty, extrovert, a man of the world. Henry was cast from another mould. Quiet and retiring, his charm w
as of an entirely different character.
Overtaken by weariness, she turned for home. It occurred to her, as she sloshed through the puddles, that there was nothing to stop her from calling him. But there was. Once something was over, it was over.
You couldn’t resurrect the past.
Eve woke on the Wednesday morning with a feeling of dread. When she got up, she made coffee and toast and smoked a cigarette. Now all she had to worry about was what she was going to wear and, more importantly, what she was going to say …
By one o’clock she had driven to the prison, found a parking space and booked in, but still had an hour to kill. First she went to the bathroom where she stared at her reflection beneath the unforgiving fluorescent light. A thin worried spectre returned her gaze. Perhaps she shouldn’t have worn the black jumper; it made her face seem even paler than it was. And her red hair even redder, which was fine if he liked redheads but a major mistake if he didn’t. She had twinned the jumper with a cream linen skirt, short enough to reveal her long legs but not so short as to make her look available. A pair of expensive high heels completed the outfit. She’d been aiming for cool and professional, with just a hint of the seductive, but she frowned into the mirror unconvinced that she’d pulled it off.
It was not the clothes that were at fault, only her attitude.
Where had her confidence gone?
She clenched her hands into two tight fists and tried to will it back, to lure it from whatever miserable corner it had taken refuge in.
Think of Terry, she urged.
But that just made it harder.
Were those shadows under her eyes? The skin looked bluish against the ivory of her cheeks. She had not slept well last night, had tossed and turned, waking over and over to the sound of the rain battering against the window.
She shivered. She couldn’t do this.
She must.
The door opened and a blonde girl came in, younger, in her early twenties. She smiled at Eve in the way that women often smiled at each other here, friendly but resigned, as if a sigh lingered always at the edges of their mouths. The girl dumped her bag on the counter, fidgeted with her hair and then started to apply a fresh layer of mascara.