Falling Sideways (10 page)

‘Of course I do.' She smiled as she said the name. ‘Oh, come on, you're not trying to tell me he's never mentioned me.'

The feeling that swept through David's body, invading every part of it simultaneously, was pure horror. ‘No, he hasn't. Why would he mention you?'

‘But he was going to—' She stopped and looked at him. ‘All right,' she said, ‘I suppose I'd better tell you. Alex and I are getting married.'

The fact that he'd intuitively anticipated it by a couple of seconds didn't make the blow any less painful. Those few seconds had been the time between seeing the other car pull out of the side turning in front of you without looking, and the actual moment of impact. ‘You're going to marry Alex Snaithe,' he said.

‘That's right. He was supposed to ask you if you'd be his best man, but obviously he didn't get round to it. Honestly, there are times when – anyway, that's between him and me.' She paused and frowned slightly. ‘You're supposed to say “Congratulations”.'

‘What? Oh, right. Congratulations.'

‘Thank you.'

David took a step back and a deep breath. ‘That still doesn't explain—'

‘Doesn't it? Oh dear. Look, can we talk about whatever it is you want to talk about on the way to the shops? I really don't want to be a nuisance, but I'm rather hungry and I'd quite like to get some clothes. Not that your things aren't really nice, in their own way, but these were the only ones I could find that were even
remotely
clean, and they aren't even my colour.'

At another time he'd have disputed that. Dressed in his shapeless old clothes she looked like a fairy-tale princess wearing someone else's shapeless old clothes. Even now, with all the confusion and strange connections ringing bells in his synapses and running away, he found it very difficult indeed to get past the fact that she was the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen in his life. But he managed it, just about.

‘All right,' he said. ‘But you've got to promise—'

‘I promise, I promise. Come on.'

He followed her down the stairs and into the street, where she stopped and looked round.

‘Which one of these is your car?' she asked.

‘None of them. I haven't got a car.'

‘You haven't— Oh. Right.' She broke off eye contact, as if he'd replied to some tactless remark of hers by confessing he had leprosy. What the hell was it about not owning a motor vehicle that made people look at you like that? ‘Doesn't matter,' she went on, just a little too briskly. ‘We can walk. Or we could get a bus,' she added, making it sound like some kind of mythical or fabulous beast that no grown-up could seriously be expected to believe in.

‘That's a good idea,' he replied. ‘And while we're waiting, you can explain a few things. For a start—'

‘Where's the bus place? You know, where you get on them.'

That was a good question; David hadn't been on a bus for nearly ten years. But he seemed to remember seeing a bus-stop sign in Freemantle Avenue. ‘This way,' he said, turning left. ‘Now, then—'

‘Are you sure it's this way?'

‘Yes. Now, I hear what you say about your Uncle John and falling in the vat, but in that case, what are you doing here?'

She looked away for a moment. ‘I explained all that,' she said. ‘You're Alex's cousin and best friend, and he's Uncle John's lawyer, and Uncle Bill's too, and Uncle Bill's just moved into the flat above yours—'

‘Yes, all right,' David persisted. ‘But it still doesn't really explain anything, does it? I mean, if I had a niece and she fell in a tank full of chemicals, I don't think my first reaction would be
My God, I'd better get her over to my lawyer's best friend, quick
. I'd be thinking more along the lines of pulling her out, and towels.'

He could feel her uncertainty; it was like standing next to a fire that had suddenly turned icy cold. ‘You're missing the point, silly,' she said. ‘I fell in the tank—'

‘Yes. And?'

‘And you happened to be there, and I needed somewhere to have a shower, get all those horrid chemicals off me. There aren't any showers at Uncle John's workshop.'

David nodded. ‘I can see that there wouldn't be. But why didn't you just go home?'

She frowned. ‘I live in Ipswich,' she said. ‘Your flat was just a little bit closer.'

‘All right,' David said, ‘why didn't your Uncle John take you back to his house? He has got one, hasn't he?'

Her uncertainty was growing. ‘No, as a matter of fact he hasn't, he sleeps in the workshop. He had to sell his house to set up the business.'

David shook his head. He could see a tiny crack opening, just wide enough to get the tip of a wedge in. ‘I see,' he said. ‘That still doesn't explain why your Uncle John brought you here,' he said. ‘Why didn't he take you to Alex's flat, for instance? He's nearer to Ravenscourt Park than me, and I expect he's got an absolutely fantastic state-of-the-art shower.'

‘Yes, but it's broken.' She started walking a little faster. He had no trouble keeping up. ‘There was a leak, water was going everywhere. And the plumber's busy, can't come and look at it till Friday. Honestly, sometimes I think it'd be easier getting a private audience with the Pope.'

‘All right,' David said. ‘Let's suppose for a moment that it's all true, what you've been telling me. So why don't I remember it that way?'

She looked at him. ‘I was trying to be polite,' she said. ‘But, if you insist. You're the one who's acting really strange, if you must know. But Uncle John said that's only to be expected. Because of the fumes.'

‘Fumes?'

‘The fumes from the polymer tank. You breathed in rather a lot of them, and it's a well-known fact that they can have a funny effect on people who aren't used to them. Temporary amnesia. Delusions, even. It's all right, the effects go away within forty-eight hours.'

‘So why aren't you—?'

‘I'm used to them,' she said quickly. ‘Chemistry student, remember? And besides, I've been hanging round Uncle's workshop since I was little. You build up a tolerance.'

They'd reached the bus stop. She made a show of reading the timetables.

‘That's all very well,' David persisted. ‘But it still doesn't explain—'

‘Wrong bus,' she interrupted. ‘We need a number seven. Or a number thirty-three.'

‘That still doesn't explain two things,' David ground on, feeling as though he was wading through hip-deep snow. ‘One, why you need a whole new wardrobe—'

She laughed. ‘You obviously don't know what that stuff does to clothes. Fzzzz. all gone.'

‘And you haven't got a change of clothes where you're staying?'

‘No, as a matter of fact I haven't. I only came down to visit, I didn't bring a bag or anything.'

He could feel the snow getting thicker and stiffer; but it was still all false, it had no right being there. ‘All right,' he said. ‘Number two. If all this is true, what you've been telling me, how come you look exactly like the portrait of a seventeenth-century witch in the National Gallery?'

She stared at him, then giggled. ‘Say that again,' she said.

‘There's a painting in the National Gallery that looks exactly like you,' David said grimly. ‘Absolutely identical. Care to explain that?'

‘How absolutely fascinating!' She smiled. ‘So, do tell. Who's it a painting of? Anybody famous?'

‘I just told you, a seventeenth-century witch. Her name was Philippa Levens—'

Her smile broadened a little; and now he wasn't wading through snow, he was a snowman, and the sun had just come out. He could feel everything he'd always thought he was melting away.

‘Ah, right,' she said. ‘That painting. Yes, I suppose I
do
look a bit like her. After all, she's my – what, great-great-great-several-more-greats-aunt. Mummy always said I've got the family nose (which sounds rather revolting if you ask me).' She shrugged her slender shoulders. ‘There's a slight resemblance, I'll give you that. Sorry, you threw me off track there by saying the picture looks just like me, that's why the penny didn't drop for a second.' Her stare was cutting into him like a plasma torch. ‘So,' she said, ‘was that your Big Deal Number Two?'

He nodded.

‘Fine.' She was silent for a moment, then added, ‘I'm sorry if I sounded a bit snappy just then, I didn't mean to. I should be more sympathetic, because I do know, it can feel really strange sometimes when you've breathed in those fumes.'

‘The poly whatsit?' He fumbled for the right word, but it slipped away. ‘The green stuff in the tank?'

‘That's right, yes. But it does go away, I promise. No harmful effects.'

‘Ah. Right. So in a few hours it'll all be back to normal and I should start remembering all this stuff you've told me. It'll all start making sense, I mean.'

‘That's it. You'll be just fine, you wait and see.' She looked over his shoulder. ‘Gosh, look, isn't that the bus coming down the road?' She stood on tiptoe and waved at it, for all the world as if it was a ship and she'd spent the last ten years marooned on a desert island. ‘Would it be all right if we ride up on the top deck, at the front? We've only got single-decker buses where I come from.'

Another curious thing: the bus was a Number 17 and the sign on the front said it was going to Ruislip. Once they boarded it, however, it seemed to undergo a road-to-Damascus conversion, abandoning its misguided intentions and taking them to the Broadway non-stop. ‘Now then,' she announced, heading for the Bentalls centre like an iron filing drawn by a magnet, ‘we'll start with Principles and take it from there. After all, I'm not really in any position to be fussy. A potato sack with three holes cut in it would probably do me, right now. Tell you what,' she went on, ‘I'll be taking a look round while you just nip over to Sainsbury's and get the food shopping. I'll meet you back here in, say, an hour and a half. By then I should've found a few things I could bear to be seen dead in, and you can buy them for me.'

At various times in his life, David had thought how great it would be to find a nice old-fashioned girl. When he staggered back from the supermarket ninety minutes later, his arms feeling as if they'd stretched two inches and had their bones replaced with overboiled spaghetti, he decided that nice, old-fashioned girls were a menace and a hazard to sentient life; what he wanted was a nice modern girl, the sort who carries her own shopping and pays for it with her own money. Anything else belonged on History's scrapheap, along with slavery and dinosaurs.

‘There you are,' said a vision of radiant loveliness from behind a pillar. ‘I was beginning to wonder where you'd got to.'

David didn't know much about clothes, particularly the female variety, so he couldn't bring to mind any of the technical terms. The net effect, however, was quite simply described: stunning – and horrendously expensive.

‘They were awfully sweet about it,' she explained. ‘I told them you'd gone off with all the cards and money, and you'd be back soon, and they said go ahead, no need to wait till he gets back. What do you think?'

‘It's, um, very nice,' David replied. He knew that wasn't the right answer, but he was too preoccupied with yet another impossible miracle to try very hard. They'd let her walk out of the shop, wearing the clothes, without paying for them? Sure, all the clone stuff and the three identical uncles and all the weird coincidences were enough to stretch his credulity. But this was way beyond stretching: it was industrial-spec extrusion.

‘Very nice,' she repeated. ‘Oh, well. Come on, I'm starving. Or had you forgotten that?'

After he'd been round and paid for all the clothes (he was very good about it, only sobbed out loud once) he followed her into a small, impractical-looking sort-of-café place, the kind that springs up like skeleton warriors from dragons' teeth and fades away before the mayfly's even started thinking seriously about sensible pension-planning. He made it as far as the corner table before the carrier-bag handles prised apart his crampcrippled fingers and sunk to the floor. Meanwhile she was at the counter, ordering authentic Moravian cherry torte.

‘That's better,' she said a little later, with her mouth full. ‘Now then, I almost forgot to mention. Alex is coming over this afternoon to pick me up.'

So what? yelled a small but vocal faction inside his brain, the one he'd started thinking of as the People's Front for the Liberation of David Perkins. In fact, we'll go further. Hooray, yippee and good riddance. Alex can take her away and you can get back to real life. Hey, what the hell are you cribbing about now?

Like most PFLDP statements, it was hard to argue with. After all, hadn't he made a serious error of judgement, and wasn't he, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, being let off the consequences for the laughably cheap price of £12,750 (plus buyer's premium and VAT) and the cost of a few groceries and frocks? It was perfect; not only was she about to walk out of his life for ever, she was also going to visit her unique blend of bewilderment and financial haemorrhage on the person he liked least in the whole world. Couldn't have turned out more pleasingly if he'd written the script himself.

Except that . . . He lifted his head, catching sight of her profile, and realised that he was still in love with her. God alone knew why: force of habit, masochism, a hidden strand of lemming DNA buried deep in his genetic matrix. Whatever it was, the thought of never seeing her again was more than he could bear.

Idiot, screamed the PFLDP, or words to that effect. He thanked them politely for their entirely helpful and sensible suggestions, and dismissed them from his conscious mind. Love, after all, made the world go round; one of many things it had in common with severe concussion. ‘Oh,' he said.