Say You Never Met Me

by Martin Yallop

  It took George some time to find the street and then, having found the house, he had to park ten or twelve doors away in a ‘residents only’ space. He waited until the tune finished on the radio before turning off the engine. One of the few compensations of long, solitary car journeys was tuning to a rock music station and playing it at high volume. The play list seemed to have changed surprisingly little since he had been a regular listener several months previously.

  Clearly parking was going to be a problem and he resolved to get rid of the dented hire car and rely on taxis and public transport. The street was just like all the other streets in the area and the terraced house was just like all the other terraced houses in all, the other streets. His temporary home would be our house, in the middle of our street, he told himself and wondered if there would be woodchip on the walls. When a beaming Deborah opened the door, there was woodchip on the walls – at least in the narrow hall. She was obviously pleased to see him and George realised that he had been apprehensive about the reception he would receive, and he beamed back. He considered embracing her but thought better of it at the last minute and so made an inelegant, stumbling entrance.

  “George! Come in! Oh! You have! It’s lovely to see you. Is that all of your luggage? Where is the car? You still have those sexy shoes, I see.” Then she remembered the first words she had prepared. “Look… about Susanna. I don’t know what to say but I am so sorry. How are you managing? How do you feel? What can I do?”

  “Half a dozen quick-fire questions again,” said George, smiling. “I suppose that overall I’m a bit lost, hurt, tired and rather lonely but I’ll be okay. How are you? What are you doing and how long are you staying here?”

  “Which question shall I answer first?” laughed Deborah. “You are as bad as me! I’ll show you which is your room then you must meet Conrad and Lydia.”

  “Let’s do it the other way around, shall we?” said George, seeing two figures emerging from a room at the end of the hall. Conrad was an exceptionally tall, lean, longhaired and prematurely grey German in his early forties. He was a technician specialising in some esoteric feature of engines used in the higher levels of motor racing. The connection with Deborah’s father had something to do with engineering and car engines but its exact nature was not clear. The specialisation was beyond George and clearly beyond Lydia, too. She did all the talking while Conrad sat smiling serenely, watching her adoringly through rimless glasses. He was so tall his knees seemed to approach his chin and his clothes hung from his rangy frame. He and Lydia had met a year ago while Conrad was attending a seminar being held at the hotel where she worked as a chambermaid. Lydia was a bubbly, extroverted, thirty-one year old, second generation Jamaican. She filled all her clothes to bursting but had to step backwards to look up into Conrad’s face as he towered above her. She bounced beside Conrad’s calm frame on the sagging sofa and chuckled and giggled her way through their story. George smiled and tried to suppress the image of Jack Sprat and his wife. They had fallen head over heels in love the very first moment they set eyes on each other. Conrad had given up his engineering career and she had walked out of her hotel job without a backward glance. He was driving a van delivering car parts and spares to garages so as to make a living and to be with Lydia; she devoted every waking hour to his happiness. George had never seen two people so deeply in love. It was impossible not to be caught up in their infectious happiness and George discovered that he felt at home and completely comfortable for the first time for what seemed like weeks.

  His room was at the back of the house with a window looking over a tiny, damp back garden and the tiny, damp back gardens and yards of the houses that backed on to it. The curtains gave off the sour smell of grime and stale cigarette smoke. Outside the most immediately noticeable scenic features were washing lines and television aerials. The yard facing him across the alley held an old-fashioned mangle on a rusty, wrought iron frame. Back here the streets had no names and he could have been in any shabby suburb. He had unpacked. It had taken less than ten minutes and he could no longer find any reasonable excuse to excuse himself from the chore of making a list of things he had to do and the order in which he had to do them. He wrote down, ‘find somewhere to stay’ and ticked it. Then he wrote, ‘telephone’ and below that he wrote, ‘Maurice, Nicholas about pension, Police for news, Valerie (check okay)’. The next heading was ‘tie up/sort out’ and the list read, ‘car, rent for house, get some clothes, four girls, Helen Knight. Finally, he wrote, ‘BIG issues’ followed by, money?, job???, rest of life?, Susan and house etc.’ He underlined the last item twice. George was pleased with this modest achievement and rewarded himself by deciding not to make a start on the list until later. Making lists had always helped him. He resisted the temptation to daydream and he got up and went downstairs to the kitchen where he could hear the sound of a radio and the murmur of voices. Lydia’s giggle was as unmistakable as it was infectious. She was perched on a wooden stool with her feet well clear of the floor. Deborah was leaning against the cooker with a mug held in front of her. There was no sign of Conrad. George hesitated in the doorway, reluctant to intrude on the shared joke but Deborah sensed his presence and turned to call him in.

  “Hi! Do you want some coffee?”

  “I was wondering what to do about getting some lunch. Is there a pub that does food? With a juke box would be good.”

  Chapter 23

  To George’s surprise, Lydia declined the offer of lunch. He had assumed that she would embrace every opportunity to eat but apparently she wanted to wait in to be sure of being at home if Conrad came back from his delivery run. It dawned on George several minutes later, when Deborah was sitting next to him in the White Hart, that Lydia had tactfully left the two of them alone together. Several times he had caught Deborah looking at him intently with her brows knitted in a puzzled, questioning expression.

  “Is something wrong? Have I missed a bit shaving or something?” George rubbed his hand over his chin in case there was something on it.

  “George, I don’t want to be not polite… to look too much into your life, but do you know what you are going to do now? I mean… are you going to stay in England now that Susanna is… well… Are you going to the funeral and going back to the island or what will you do?”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t know but what happened to Susanna, before she died, I mean, as she was leaving Corfu but I think, well… somebody thinks, this may have something to do with the accident… if it was an accident. I need to get it clear in my own mind. The police seem to think she was deliberately run down but that seemed pretty far-fetched until I spoke to someone who knows about these things – the people trafficking, but I still don’t know.”

  “You’re English, George, so it must seem fantastic to you but, believe me, if you came from the Balkans, you would not find it hard to believe that criminals could kill someone for revenge or to keep them quiet. It happens; it really does.”

  “I know. I’d thought about that but I don’t know yet what I can do. The police will listen politely and probably try to investigate but what do I tell them? I’ve no names or dates or facts, just a suspicion. And another thing; I’m trying to keep a low profile, trying not to draw too much attention to myself. I could have a... a sort of a problem myself if I get too involved.”

  “Why, George? What did you do? Rob a bank,” Deborah teased?

  “In a way, yes. I don’t know that it counts as robbery exactly but I don’t want to put it to the test.” The old chill of anxiety returned so when Deborah opened her mouth to say something, George got there first. “ And I don’t much want to talk about it yet. The fewer people involved, the better. On the other hand, I can’t just go and live on my own on an island for the rest of my life. Then there’s money. I mean, I’m okay for now but it won’t last forever. I probably need a job or a business or something. But if I do that I may have to give something to Susan but even if I don’t I can’t leave without sett
ling a divorce and all that. I’m not even sure if I want a divorce. It was all about Susanna but now…well, I don’t really know. Then there’s the girls coming over. I owe it to Susanna to see that through to some sort of conclusion. Oh, I don’t know. Want another drink?” Easing himself into his mock-Victorian seat on his return from the bar, George began the story of his meeting with Helen Knight. Deborah listened intently, watching his face.

  “My God, George, your life is complicated, you poor thing. But this is all very exciting, isn’t it? I need to get a job too but I haven’t really started looking yet. I was sort of waiting to find out what you were going to do. Perhaps we could work together? Or I could help you somehow if you are going to do something else? Are you going to help this Helen woman?” She leaned forward and put her hands over his where they held his pint glass, further warming the warm bitter. It was comforting. And more. George felt a glow of intimacy but kept his face straight.

  “Another string of questions!” He leaned forward. “I did have a vague idea that I… or we… might get the girls to help somehow, when they get here. Maybe they could somehow meet people… fellow Albanian girls… yes, yes, or Macedonians… who came here illegally and are already working in the sex trade. Of course, they may not want to, especially after what happened to Susanna. I’d need to get some advice from Helen or someone. Anyway, I don’t feel I can just walk away from it now. Whatever…”

  Food arrived and scampi and chips came between them and warm tartar sauce with a grey-green skin and knives and forks wrapped in red paper serviettes completed the separation. He put his hand out again, briefly and hesitantly but Deborah seemed not to notice, busy spooning tired capers and pale mayonnaise on to her skimpy salad garnish. George felt comfortable. ‘Come and hold my hand; I want to contact the living,’ he thought and settled down to his warm beer and fried frozen chips. Wonderful; no beating good pub grub!

  Neither of them had noticed the nondescript man who had come into the bar and hesitating just inside the door, looked around and, seeming to change his mind, had turned and quietly left.

  Lydia was still alone when they got back to the house and a somewhat preoccupied George did not see the questioning look she gave Deborah or the little, non-committal shrug given in reply.

  “There was a call for you, George.” Lydia fumbled for a piece of paper in her ski-pants pocket. “Somebody called Brown, from the probation service. What have you been up to?”

  “Probation? Not the police? It’s probably about the accident, but I don’t see where the probation people come into it.”

  It was not about the accident. It was about the mugging. Lance had been to court and pleaded guilty. Sentencing had been deferred for reports and to allow George to be contacted. The magistrates were minded to make an order for Lance to be confronted by his victim as well as for attendance at a drugs rehabilitation clinic and for community service – all part of attempts to reform him. Was George willing to meet Lance to tell him how badly the mugging had affected him? George got the impression he was supposed to agree and, to avoid having to think of reasons he didn’t want to meet Lance or to confess that he had all but forgotten about the mugging, he said he would be willing to co-operate if the magistrates saw fit to make such an order, falling easily into legal jargon.

  The walls of the terraced house were too thin to shut out the sounds from the next room. George had been awake for some time, wide-eyed in the darkness, his mind churning on what to do and what to do first. He knew what he should do. He should get up and work on his list – spend ten minutes on starting to turn it into a project plan with dates, deliverables and dependencies, then he would be able to sleep. But he was afraid that if he got up, his movements would be heard next door and Lydia and Conrad would be embarrassed that their energetic lovemaking had disturbed him, even though they had. Mostly they made him feel lonely and unloved. He badly needed affection and approval for his actions and he had nobody he could really talk to. Even the prospect of going back to Susan, of asking her to take him back might be better than lying awake and alone in a cheap bed, in a small room in a rented, terraced house in South Croydon in September in his forties worrying about finding a way of making a living. You’re a slave to money. Then you die. At least Conrad had Lydia and a future. A vivid memory of lying awake in another bed, long ago, sprang into his mind. Had it been Harriet or Sally? Whoever, and why ever, he had accepted the offer of a bed for the night after the party. Fuzzy with cider, and forever optimistic that his sixteen-year-old lust was about to be indulged, he had not expected her parents to be home, much less to be allocated a bed in a room also occupied by her three-year-old brother in a cot. He had lain awake for some time while the room spun nauseatingly but had eventually slept for a few hours before he was awoken in the pale, early light of a summer dawn by the urgent ringing of his bladder. His roommate was also awake and overwhelmed with excitement to find someone in the nearby bed. Every twitch or wriggle had drawn squeaks of delight and anticipation. As an only child, George was unused to dealing with small people. He had been terrified and dared not move. Instead, he had lain, fully conscious, and tortured by his bladder for what seemed like hours before finally being rescued, at last, by the arrival of Hannah or Sarah or whatever her name had been. Now as then, he thought that, if this were a movie, the bedroom door would silently open and a sexy, rescuing girl would slip into his room.

  “George,” whispered Deborah, slipping into the room through the silently opened door. “Are you awake?”

  George froze, unsure how to proceed and unsure for a moment whether he was awake or dreaming. While he wondered, the door closed with a barely-audible click. He sat up quickly and saw stars as his nose made violent and painful contact with Deborah’s elbow. His stifled profanity produced a tinkle of giggles from Deborah and a sudden, freeze-frame silence from the next bedroom.

  Chapter 24

  While George was still munching a piece of breakfast toast, Deborah handed him a folded sheet of printed-paper, too-obviously acting as if nothing had happened the night before.

  George accepted his cue and responded more curtly than he had intended. “What’s this?”

  “It’s a newsletter… a sort of newspaper that they give out in London. I got it yesterday morning at East Croydon station. A woman was handing them out. I expect she was there because she knows many foreigners visit the Immigration Office or whatever it is called. It is near. It’s mostly in Russian, but it is written by some people from the Ukraine for Ukrainians, Moldovans and so on, you know, people from the old Soviet Union. It gives advice about immigration and applying for asylum, that sort of thing.”

  “Fascinating! I have no plans to visit Lunar House and I can’t read Russian so why have you given it to me? Do you think I should learn Russian?”

  Deborah had not yet discovered that George was best left alone for the first hour or so in the morning but she persisted.

  “Well, you English are so bad at languages, it might be a good idea if you did learn something but, no, that’s not why. On the back page is an advertisement... a job advertisement.”

  George looked blankly at the ruled box on the back page, still morosely munching. “Does this say one thousand pound a week,” he asked, his banker’s instincts stirring?

  “Yes, it does but that’s not the point. This is a job for ‘door girls’, sort of hostesses in a Soho club. Do you know what that means? No? Well. I’ll tell you. The job of the door girl is to get men to come into the strip club or whatever. That’s all. She has drinks – very expensive drinks - with them and she talks to them. That’s all.”

  “Sounds like a lot of money for just talking,” said George, his suspicions rising. He was inclined to forbid it – to tell Deborah there was no way he was going to allow his… his what? He was jealous at the prospect of Deborah working in a club, enticing men to watch a strip show or more but he was in no position to allow or forbid anything. “It sounds very unpleasant, very…
seedy,” he finished limply.