I pushed past, desperate to escape, and soon found myself sitting in a toilet cubicle willing the night to end, nauseous from the congealed gunge stuck to my chest. I heaved racking silent sobs as the floodgates burst their dam.
‘Carrie, are you in there?’ Jade was soon working her way along the cubicles, banging heavily on each door, her voice screaming over the background noise. But she was in a hurry. I sensed her irritation. My stony silence was no match for her determination.
I slowly pulled back the lock and faced her.
‘What the fuck’s happened to you? You look like death. Christ, Carrie.’
‘Thanks.’
I walked over to the basins and turned the cold tap up full. I cupped the icy liquid in both hands and threw it over my face, staring in the wide cracked mirror at the huge black tears of misery deposited by dissolving mascara. But I no longer cared.
‘Don’t make it worse. Please,’ Jade said as she peeled her consoling arm from my shoulders. Embarrassment and frustration had already taken the place of pity. I scrubbed my red blotchy cheeks with a tissue and scraped at the black gritty sediment until I couldn’t see.
‘Don’t worry, Jade. Go and enjoy yourself. I’ll be fine. I’ve got a taxi waiting,’ I lied. I dripped soapy water from my hands into the sink and put them under the dryer. A monsoon of hot air drowned out my friend’s voice until it evaporated into thin air. I watched her tousle her hair in the mirror and reapply lip gloss and eye liner with a practised steady hand.
I gave her a wan smile, slung my bag over my shoulder and said goodnight.
‘Night, hun. I’ll call tomorrow. Wish me luck,’ she shrieked. Excitement was written large across her face as she turned towards the toilets. She waved me off, a flippant little gesture, like swatting away an irritating fly.
Jason was standing outside the ladies.
‘You okay?’
‘Not really,’ I said as I wiped wet residue from my neck with a sleeve.
‘Come. I’ll see you out.’
Like a disgraced child, I followed as he took my arm. I felt his fingers burn warmth through my shivering body. We squeezed through the sweaty gyrating mass until we reached the back door where the cold night air hit us with its wall of ice.
‘Where to?’
‘Highgate. Archway Road. Thanks but I’m okay now.’
He walked towards the row of taxis, spoke through a window and then came back as a cab pulled alongside.
‘Here. Let me.’ He stretched across and opened the door. I wasn’t sure at this point whether to kiss him on the cheek or to slink silently into the back seat. Mortification at my appearance and acrid smell pushed me towards the latter.
‘Thanks again.’ I kept my head down, scared to look and see pity in his eyes.
But instead of turning and heading back into the nightclub, he slipped in beside me and pulled the door gently to.
‘Highgate please. The Archway Road up near the tube station.’
As the cab pulled away, we both spotted Jade out of the window. She was standing by the back door of the club scouring her surroundings for Jason. I was sure she wasn’t looking for me. Her eyes scanned left to right and back again with an occasional glance over her shoulder. Her long tanned arms encircled her chest as she gripped them tight across her body against the chill.
‘Duck,’ he said and we laughed in unison, hunching down from view below the glass. His arms wrapped tight around me and pulled me ever lower. ‘That’s what I call a close shave.’
That was the moment I fell in love with Jason.
4
Alexis
We start to unpack the boxes together. Adam is on call but has promised faithfully that unless there’s a dire emergency, I will have his full co-operation this evening. Bonnie, a friend’s dog and our temporary house guest, is watching avidly; but from a distance. She’s waiting for me to summon her, brandishing a treat, but Adam’s admonishing finger has rendered her immobile; but watchful. Her ears are up.
‘Stay.’ He stares her down. Then suddenly his mobile goes off.
‘Adam Morley,’ he announces in his very important voice. The doctor on call needs to have gravitas. He’s talking to someone sycophantic from work. I carry on tearing newspaper from mugs and glasses, stacking them on the coffee table. I bang the receptacles down on to the wooden surface, making deliberate noise until Adam moves towards the door into the hall. His voice echoes off the empty walls.
Bonnie treads warily towards me, tail down, unsure.
‘Come here.’
She snuggles in beside me, hiding behind my bent knees, trying to make herself invisible.
‘Yes, I see. Yes. Hmm, hmm,’ Adam mumbles. He makes fed-up gestures in my direction, miming frustration with raised eyebrows and theatrical sighs. The person on the other end doesn’t know he has commitments. He doesn’t tell them he’s unpacking cases of belongings pertaining to starting a new life in a new home.
‘Yes, I understand. I’m on my way.’ I knew he was a doctor when I married him. I liked the respect that went with his profession. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, clicking his phone off. ‘Leave it. I promise I’ll do my share tomorrow. It’s a burst appendix.’ It sounds impersonal, like a burst pipe. He turns quickly, no interest in my reply, having already decided he needs to get going, and starts to head upstairs. His bare feet move firmly across the wooden boards in the hall.
‘Can’t someone else cover this once?’
He stops, turns back. ‘Alexis.’ The one curt word implies there’ll be no discussion. Bonnie slinks down further behind me. ‘You know the score. It goes with the job. Emergencies happen.’ There’s no room for manoeuvre. He’s the breadwinner.
‘Yes but you promised.’
He moves closer and looks down at me but, without further comment, shoos Bonnie back into the corner.
‘Can’t you put that bloody thing in the garage?’
I don’t answer. Instead I carry on ripping paper with barely tempered aggression and then move towards the television and switch it on. At least he managed to plug it in before he got the call. With that, he walks away and disappears upstairs to change.
Five minutes later, dressed in a work suit accessorised with a weird jazzy psychedelic tie, Adam reappears and bends down and kisses me on top of my head. The clock leaning against the wall shows it’s 7.30pm.
‘I shouldn’t be too late. But don’t wait up,’ he says. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’
‘Whatever.’ I offer a weak conciliatory smile. ‘Hope it goes okay.’ But he’s already heading towards the front door.
I move to the window, still void of curtains, and watch Adam’s car disappear out the close towards Church Street. I look round the circular confine, imagining happy families behind the closed doors. Bonnie’s jumping up and down, barking with little relieved yelps, willing me to lift her up. Her body, soft and downy, relaxes into my chest. She’s happy now we’re alone. I’ve decided that one day I will buy myself a dog. One day if Adam is not around. Bonnie has already become attached even though I’m only looking after her for a few days; a favour for a friend.
I watch a large black 4 x 4 pull up outside the Harpers’ house. It will have passed Adam’s saloon on its way into the close. I wonder if the men did a pleasant but emotionally distant acknowledgement gesture through their blackened windows. I pull back from my vantage point, hiding behind the wall, and peek out across the road. I see Susan Harper’s husband step out of his car and proceed to put his key in the front door. He is tall and dark skinned with slickly gelled hair sticking to his scalp. Perhaps I’ll pop over again at the weekend, making some excuse about locating the stopcock or perhaps give them our spare keys. It looks as if I’m going to need company.
Should be back by midnight. A few complications. Ax
It’s ten o’clock when Adam’s text pings through. Perhaps I’m being paranoid but a burst appendix surely doesn’t take four hours. Bonnie has fallen into a deep trusting slumber b
y the time I turn off the lamps. I settle her in the utility room before creeping upstairs in the dark. The wind has picked up outside and seems to be howling through a gap somewhere in the house. Perhaps it’s the bare walls and floors that are turning up the volume on every tiny noise and making me anxiously alert. Lack of through traffic makes the close feel cut off from the real world.
I keep my onesie on as I climb into bed, glad that I remembered to throw the duvet and pillows loosely into the car so we would at least have some bedding for our first night. The tightly sealed champagne bottle with the two crystal glasses sits accusingly on the bedside table next to where Adam will sleep. I want him to feel guilty.
The small bedside light throws its beam onto the folder. I keep it hidden in my bedside drawer away from Adam’s belittling eye and slowly spread out the contents in front of me before I start reading the downloaded articles on the latest tracking devices, home surveillance and PC forensics.
I’ve decided to stick to my original plan. The burst appendix incident has spurred me on to use Adam as my guinea pig. However, I won’t let on, giving him the benefit of the doubt; innocent until proven guilty. An alarming increase in his overtime and late-night emergencies has helped me decide.
‘A private detective? For Christ’s sake, Alexis. I think you need to get real. Get a proper job.’ His derision has slowly turned from irritation to anger. ‘Why not get a better teaching post?’ He mocks when I tell him that I’ve wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps since I was about six.
‘It’s not some pipe dream. It’s what I want to do. The way you wanted to be a doctor.’
‘I wanted to be an astronaut first.’
As I settle down under the duvet, bunching up the pillows behind me, my mind races ahead, working out how best to tail Adam and monitor his movements. If I’m wrong, I won’t own up, and maybe in years to come, I will own up to Adam about how I honed my skills. Perhaps in middle age we’ll rekindle a shared sense of humour and enjoy the joke.
Dad taught me to follow my instincts. His career in the Met, forty years, was cut short by one too many high-speed car chases but not before he’d shared thousands of clues and cases with me, teaching me how to interpret data to catch the villain. I swallow hard, blinking back the memories.
It was at the hospital Christmas party that niggling doubts first surfaced. Debbie was a junior nurse but we never got introduced. I remember her being loud and raucous, big and buxom, and Adam pointedly avoiding her. When she headed in our direction, Adam took my arm and steered me away in the opposite direction. This happened twice; one time too many.
‘That was a bit rude.’ There was something in the way the nurse stared after us that alerted me. I watched her down a plastic beaker of punch. Her wild eyes made looks to kill.
‘Oh ignore her. The nurses can’t hold their drink. Always the same at these bloody dos.’ Adam rapidly propelled me off into a far corner where a huddle of smartly dressed consultants was holding a more cerebral conversation. He thought I didn’t notice his backward glance though, the admonishing stare directed towards Debbie. That was the second clue.
My eyes become heavy, the lids straining to stay open, when I decide to put the file away and turn off the light. It’s shortly before midnight and there’s still no sign of Adam.
Suddenly I hear a determined barking from downstairs. Bonnie is awake. She usually sleeps through the night. I sit up, straining my ears for other noises, a door opening or closing, rogue footsteps on the stairs. There’s nothing; barking and then silence. I get out of bed and, using the torch on my mobile, make my way along the landing, following the white streak of light down the stairs through to the back of the house.
‘What’s up? Come here, you.’ The barking has subsided, replaced by faint whining noises and Bonnie’s stubby little tail is swishing furiously back and forth. ‘You know I can’t take you upstairs.’ I carry the little body through into the kitchen and reach up for the biscuit treats. Her consternation is quickly forgotten, as she gobbles down the reward. She licks my face, her wet sticky tongue probing my neck and cheeks.
We hear a car pull up in the driveway. Resignation grips Bonnie as I hurriedly put her back in the basket. She won’t lie down, not yet, but watches me intently.
‘Shh. Be a good girl. I’ll see you in the morning.’ Her small bright eyes cut through the darkness and as I close the door, she knows now to be quiet. She’ll not bark again tonight. Not now that Adam is home. We share an instinctive unease.
5
Alexis
I drive cautiously through debris and fallen branches strewn across the leafy suburban avenues. Storm ‘Nathan’ has deposited a trail of destruction in its wake but at least the persistent rain has abated and I soon reach the High Road which is clear except for the clogged arteries of London traffic. A bright frost-free day is essential for my plan. I’ve had to be patient.
Adam left later than usual this morning, spending what seemed like an eternity toying with his full-bran muesli. His bowels are an obsession.
‘There’s too much cholesterol in that,’ he had said, pointing towards my warm croissant, ‘and you’ll put on weight.’
‘I’ll take the risk. Anyway I don’t know how you can eat that rabbit food.’
‘It’s not about enjoyment, it’s about discipline,’ he said, spooning up the dregs of browned milk. ‘Don’t you want to live till you’re a hundred?’
By the time I managed to leave the house it was around ten o’clock. There was no one about outside and as I got into the car, I was hopeful that rush hour might have abated. Within the cosy confines of Riverside Close it’s easy to forget that London never sleeps.
It’s a good hour later before I pull up outside the lock-up in Camden. The red paint is peeling off the up-and-over door whose colour no longer makes it look so revolutionary and garish. Grey steel can be seen breaking through the glossy façade. I sit for a moment in the car recalling Trent’s pride in his purchase.
‘What do you think, sis? Cool eh?’ He had unlocked the metal shutter and rolled it up and over, leading me proudly inside.
‘Very,’ I’d said. You couldn’t help but love Trent’s enthusiasm. Every idea was the next big thing. ‘This time next year we’ll be millionaires.’ My little brother was Del Boy in the making.
‘A ramp here, stacking shelves against this wall, and I’m thinking of selling tyres. It’ll work,’ he’d said, willing me to get fired up by the damp grey walls and broken concrete floor.
I finger the key which is strung around my neck, hesitant for a second, before inserting it into the slot. The metal rollers creak as I push the door up. Flakes of rust attack my eyes and momentarily blur my vision.
The reek of oil hits my senses first before I manage to open my eyes and take in the sight of tools littering the floor and benches. I find a switch which turns on a single dangling electric light. Typical. Trent wouldn’t have thought to disconnect the electric supply before he upped sticks and left. The lone bulb sheds an eerie glow around the room. Torn stained overalls lie strewn across spare tyres and a rusting broken down ramp fills the centre of the space.
In the far corner I spot what I’m looking for. There’s a dirty green tarpaulin on top but the outline of my brother’s pride and joy is distinct. I strip back the cover and look at the sleek black machine. A Kawasaki Ninja 250R. I finger the faring, remembering how little protection it offered as I clung petrified but exhilarated to Trent’s body as we sped down the motorway. Fear and exhilaration were like the flip sides of the same coin.
I remember his patience teaching me how to master his new toy, spending tireless hours with me at a disused airstrip showing me how to skid, slide and build speed. We were a good team but it’s painful to remember. I miss him and wish he’d come home.
The black helmet is clipped to the handlebars, waiting for my brother’s return and for him to hop back on. I lift it off, pull it over my head and then throw my right leg across the seat bef
ore I try to bring the engine back to life. The key is still in the ignition and with a single turn, it kick-starts the machine into spluttering action.
After filling the bike with petrol, I practise weaving in and out of the endless traffic. I drive, gingerly at first, to Riverside Close, timing the journey and back again. By five o’clock I decide to stop off at a café near the hospital for a strong coffee to recharge my batteries and prepare for the night ahead. It could be a long one. I’ve at least a couple of hours to kill.
I reread the text messages from Trent while I savour the hot drink. I had gingerly asked if it was okay to use his bike, half expecting a firm negative.
Of course you can, Sis. Enjoy but be careful. It’s not a toy. Love you. Trent xxxx
The messages bring us closer, the miles between not so gaping when his words light up the screen. America is suddenly comfortingly round the corner.
Of course I’ll be careful. Miss you. Wish you’d come home. A xxxx By the way you’ll have a big electric bill waiting for you!!
He promises he’ll be back next year. It seems a lifetime away. Trent would understand what I was doing; encourage me to follow my heart. I close my eyes and conjure up his smug reply, ‘I told you so’ when I explain about Adam. Trent never did like him. The thought doubles my determination, and my doubts.
I click the phone shut, pulling back from my reverie and drain the last dregs of coffee. Reattaching the helmet, I head back out into the biting night air. There’s work to be done.
It’s seven o’clock when I see Adam exit the hospital. He told me he’d be late as he promised to go for a few beers with colleagues. But he never drinks with co-workers after work, preferring to keep an aloof distance. I wait behind a bus shelter, tucked out of view as he strolls to his car. Tonight I’ll find out where he’s really going.
4 Riverside Close Page 3