Land of the Living (12 page)

‘Where did I go after that, then?’

They didn’t know. All they could tell me was that I had been rather hyped-up, had kept them up till the early hours of Monday, talking and drinking and making fine plans for the rest of my life, and then had left the next day. They glanced at each other surreptitiously as they were telling me this and I wondered what they weren’t telling me. Had I behaved disgracefully, thrown up on the carpet? At one point, I came back into the kitchen just as they were getting ready to leave for work. They were talking urgently in low voices, their heads close together, and when they saw me they stopped and smiled at me and pretended they’d simply been making arrangements for the evening.

Them too, I thought, and I looked away as if I hadn’t noticed anything. It was going to be like this, especially after Sheila and Guy had talked to Sadie, and they’d all talked to Robin, and then to Carla and Joey and Sam. I could imagine them all ringing each other up. Have you heard? Isn’t it terrible? What do you think, I mean,
really
think, just between us?

The trouble is, friendships are all about tact. You don’t want to know what friends say about you to other friends or to partners. You don’t want to know what they really think or how far their loyalty goes. You want to be very careful before you test it. You might not like what you find.

Four

I had no embarrassment. I was down to about five pounds and I just had to borrow money from Sheila and Guy. They were very nice about it. Of course, being ‘very nice’ meant a lot of huffing and puffing and gritting of teeth and rummaging in purse and wallet and saying that they would be able to get to the bank later. At first I felt like saying it didn’t matter and I could manage without the money, but it did matter and I couldn’t manage without it. So fifty-two pounds in assorted notes and coins was dropped into my open hands. Then I borrowed a pair of knickers from Sheila and a T-shirt and threw mine into her dirty-washing basket. She asked if she could give me anything else and I asked if she had an old sweater that I could take for a day or two. She said, ‘Of course’, and went and found me a lovely one that didn’t look old at all. Sheila was rather larger than me, especially now, but I was able to roll up the sleeves and didn’t look too ridiculous. Even so, she couldn’t keep an entirely straight face.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You look great but…’

‘Like someone living rough,’ I said.

‘No, no,’ she insisted. ‘I’m used to you seeming, I don’t know, more grown-up, maybe.’

As they left for work, I thought they looked a little concerned about the idea of leaving me alone in their house. I don’t know whether they thought I would raid the drinks cabinet or the fridge or make international calls. In fact I raided the medicine cabinet for some paracetamol, and I made four calls, all local. I ordered a cab because there was no way I was going to wander around the streets on my own. I rang Robin at work. She said she couldn’t meet me for lunch. I said she had to. She said she was already having lunch with someone. I said I was sorry but she had to cancel it. There was a pause and she said, ‘All right’, with a sigh.

I was calling in a lifetime of favours. I rang Carla and leant on her to meet me for coffee in the afternoon. I rang Sam and arranged to meet him for another coffee, forty-five minutes after my meeting with Robin. He didn’t ask why. Neither did Carla. It seemed worrying. They must know something. What had Sadie said? I knew the feeling. I, too, had been feverish with some amazingly hot piece of gossip and had run around spreading it like Typhoid Mary. I could imagine it. Hey, listen, everybody, did you hear what happened to Abbie? Or was it simpler than that? Hey, everybody, Abbie’s gone mad. Oh, and by the way, she’ll want to take all of your loose change.

I looked out of the window until I saw the cab draw up. I reached for my bag and realized I didn’t have a bag. I had nothing except a small amount of Sadie’s money and quite a bit more of Sheila and Guy’s crammed into my pockets. I told the cab driver to take me to Kennington Underground station. The cab driver wasn’t exactly ecstatic. And he was puzzled as well. It was probably the first time in his career that he had taken a passenger to a tube station a few streets away. It cost three pounds fifty.

I took the train to Euston and walked across the platform, where I changed on to the Victoria Line. I got off at Oxford Circus and walked to the Bakerloo Line platform. I looked across the rails at the map. Yes, this train led to places satisfyingly remote from anywhere I’d ever heard of. A train arrived and I got on. Then, as the doors started to close, I stepped off. The train pulled out and for a second or two, until other people arrived on the platform, I was alone. Anyone looking at me would have thought I was a lunatic. And obviously I had known that nobody was following me. Nobody
could
be following me. But now I really knew and that made me feel better. A bit. I went to the Central Line and took the tube to Tottenham Court Road.

I walked to a branch of my bank. I felt a great weariness as I pushed through the doors. All the simple things had become so hard. Clothes. Money. I felt like Robinson Crusoe. And the worst bit was that I had to tell almost everybody I met some version of my story. I gave a very truncated version to the woman behind the counter and she sent me to the ‘personal banker’, a larger woman in a turquoise blazer with brass buttons, sitting at a desk in the corner. I waited for some time while she opened a bank account for a man who apparently spoke no English. When he left, she turned to me with an expression of relief. Little did she know. I explained that I wanted to withdraw some money from my account but I had been the victim of a crime and I didn’t have my cheque book, credit card or debit card. No problem, she said. Any form of photographic identification would be perfectly acceptable.

I took a deep breath. I didn’t have any form of identification. I didn’t have anything. She looked puzzled. She almost looked afraid. ‘Then I’m sorry –’ she began.

‘But there must be some way of getting at my money,’ I said. ‘And I need to cancel my old cards and get new ones. I’ll sign anything you want, give you any information you want.’

She still looked doubtful. More than doubtful. She seemed almost paralysed. Then I remembered Cross. Of all the people who had ejected me back into the world, Cross had looked the most unhappy. He had muttered something about how if there was any help I needed he would do what he could.

‘There’s a policeman,’ I said. ‘He was in charge of the case. You can check it with him.’

I wrote down the number for her and was immediately worried. If Cross was too co-operative, I might be worse off than before. She frowned at the number and said she would have to talk to the assistant branch manager. He was a balding man in a decidedly smart grey suit and he looked worried as well. I think they would have been relieved if I had got into a temper and stormed out but I didn’t give up. They had to let me back into my life.

It took a long time. There were phone calls. They asked me lots of questions about my life, about my account, bills I’d paid recently, they asked my mother’s maiden name. I signed lots of pieces of paper and the woman typed and typed into the computer on her desk. In the end, with obvious reluctance, they gave me two hundred pounds and told me that they would send new credit cards and a cheque book to me within two working days, maybe even the following day if I was very lucky. I suddenly realized that this meant that it would all be sent to Terry’s flat. I was going to get them to send it somewhere else, but I thought if I tried to change my address as well, they would probably throw me out on to the street. So I left with the wad of cash stuffed into two trouser pockets. I felt as if I were coming out of a betting shop.

∗

Robin hugged me hard as soon as she saw me, but if she was concerned she was also wary. I could see why. We looked like members of a different species. She’s beautiful, dark-skinned, groomed, besuited. I looked like what I was, which was someone with nowhere to live and nowhere particularly urgent to go. She met me outside the travel agent’s where she works. She hadn’t booked anywhere for us to eat. I said I didn’t mind. I
didn’t
mind. We went to an Italian sandwich bar where we sat at a counter. I ordered a large coffee and a sandwich that looked like an entire delicatessen counter between two slices of bread. I felt ravenously hungry. She just had coffee. She started to pay and I didn’t stop her. I needed to husband my money carefully for the moment. I didn’t know what things I would have to pay for in the vagrant existence I was leading.

‘Sadie called me,’ she said.

‘Good,’ I mumbled, my mouth full of sandwich.

‘I can’t believe it. We’re so appalled for you. If I can do anything, anything at all…’

‘What did Sadie say?’

‘Just the bare bones.’

And then Robin gave me a version of my story. It was a relief to be hearing it, rather than telling it.

‘Are you seeing someone?’ she asked, when she had finished.

‘You mean a man?’ I said.

‘I meant a doctor.’

‘I’ve been in hospital.’

‘But Sadie said you had a head injury.’

I’d just taken a large bite of my sandwich and there was a pause in the conversation as I chewed and swallowed.

‘That’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about, Robin. As Sadie said, I got this concussion thing, and that was the problem with the doctors and the police. So one of the things I’m trying to do is to reconstruct what happened in the time where my memory is blank. For example, and I feel a bit embarrassed even telling you this, I didn’t realize I had walked out on Terry. It’s stupid, isn’t it? I finally get it together to make one of the best decisions of my life, then forget all about it. So, basically, if I were a policeman and I were missing and I said to you, “When did you last see Abbie Devereaux?” what would you say?’

‘What?’

‘When did you last fucking see me, Robin? That’s not such a difficult question.’

‘No, that’s right.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I knew you’d left Terry. We met the next day. Sunday, late morning.’

‘Hang on. Sunday January the thirteenth?’

‘Right. We went shopping over on Kensington high street. You must remember that.’

‘Not a thing. What did I buy?’

She looked at me aghast.

‘Is this for real? Well, I bought some fantastic shoes. They were reduced to thirty-five pounds from something ridiculous like a hundred and sixty.’

‘But what about me?’

Robin smiled. ‘I remember now. We’d talked on the phone the previous evening. You were a bit manic then. But that morning you were fine. Really good. The best I’d seen you in ages. You said you felt really positive and you said you were going to equip yourself for your new life. You bought a lovely short brown dress. Crushed velvet. Some tights and knickers. Shoes to go with the dress. And a spectacular coat. Long, navy blue. You spent a fortune. It was good, though. Money well spent. You were rather giggly about spending so much when you’d just walked out of your job.’

‘Oh, God! Don’t tell me I’ve left work as well as Terry!’

‘Yes. Didn’t you know? You didn’t seem to mind, though.’

‘So I don’t have a job any more?’

The ground seemed to sway under my feet. The world appeared changed again. Greyer, colder.

‘Abbie?’ Robin looked concerned.

I fumbled for something to say. ‘Was that the last you saw of me?’

‘We had lunch and we arranged to meet for a drink. I think it was on the Thursday evening. But the day before you rang and cancelled.’

‘Why?’

‘You said something had come up. You were very apologetic.’

‘Was it something good? Did I sound upset?’

‘You sounded… well, a bit hyper, maybe. It was very brief.’

‘And that was it?’

‘Yes.’ Robin looked at me now, as I finished the last of my sandwich. ‘This couldn’t all have been some sort of misunderstanding?’

‘You mean being captured and held prisoner by someone who said he was going to kill me and that he had already killed other women? You mean that bit?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Robin,’ I said slowly. ‘You’re one of my oldest friends and I want you to be honest with me. Do you believe me?’

At that, Robin took my head between her slim fingers, kissed me on both cheeks, and then pushed me back and looked at me. ‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘if it’s true, and I’m sure it is, I just can’t bear the idea of it.’

‘You should try it from where I’m sitting.’

My meeting with Carla consisted of hugs and tears and assurances of friendship but it basically boiled down to the fact that she had been away for those days and all she could say was that I had left a message on her answering-machine asking her to call and when she got back she had left a message on Terry’s answering-machine and that was that.

Sam is another of my oldest friends and I can’t believe that the boy I remember with a joint in his hand upstairs at various parties in south London is now a solicitor who wears a suit and a tie and has to impersonate a grown-up between nine and five on weekdays. And yet, at the same time, I had started to see what this rather good-looking, trendy twenty-six-year-old was going to look like when he was forty.

‘Yes, we met,’ he said. ‘We had a drink on Sunday evening.’ He smiled. ‘I feel a bit pissed off that you don’t remember it. You were staying with Sheila and Guy. You talked a bit about Terry. But not that much. I thought that we were meeting so you could sound off about that ungrateful bastard. I mean, ungrateful for living with you. But you seemed excited more than anything else.’

Oh, yes. I remembered. I didn’t remember our meeting but I sort of knew what must have happened. Sam and I had always been friends, never been out together. I sometimes wondered if he had regretted that and maybe he might have seen my break-up with Terry as an opportunity. It was something that had crossed my mind too. But clearly the Abbie who had had a drink with him had decided against him. He was better as a friend.

I took a sip of about the fourth coffee I’d had that afternoon. I was buzzing with caffeine and strangeness. I hadn’t learnt much, but maybe that was what was interesting. I now knew that I had chosen not to spend those last days before it happened with my closest friends. So who had I spent them with? What had I done? Who had I been?

‘What are you going to do?’ Sam asked, in his forensic style.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Because if what you say… I mean, from what you say, he must be out there, and
he
knows that
you
’re out there, so what are you going to do?’

I took another sip of coffee. This was the question that my brain had been screaming at me and that I had been trying to ignore.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Hide. What else can I do?’