Land of the Living (23 page)

Twenty-one

As I came out on to the steps of the museum I realized that I was freezing. I had escaped from the flat in only a light sweater. So I walked to Oxford Street and went into almost the first clothes shop I came to. I spent fifty pounds on a jacket. It was red and quilted and made me look as if I should be standing on a railway platform taking down train numbers, but it was warm. I took the tube north and walked to Ben’s house. He bloody wasn’t there. I walked over to a Haverstock Hill café, ordered an expensive frothy coffee and allowed myself to think.

Jo’s flat was now out of bounds to me. He’d found me again, and now he’d lost me again, for the time being. I tried to think of another possibility but there was none. A person had obtained my address from Carol by pretending to be my father. I made a feeble attempt to imitate a sceptical policeman. I tried to imagine an angry client or someone I’d hired being so desperate to contact me personally that they would attempt this complicated subterfuge. It was nonsense. It was him. So what would he do? He had found where I was staying. He didn’t know I knew that — or maybe he didn’t. He might think that I was out and he simply had to wait there for me. If that was so, then I could call the police and they could go and arrest him and it would all be over.

This idea was so tempting that I could hardly stop myself. The snag was that I knew I was about one millimetre away from Jack Cross losing patience with me altogether. If I tried to call out the police because of some suspicion I had, they might simply not come. Or if they did come, they might just find that he wasn’t there. And what was I asking them to do? Go up to any man, any man at all, and accost him on suspicion of being my kidnapper?

I finished my coffee and walked back to Ben’s flat. The lights were still off. I didn’t know what to do so I lurked outside, stamping my feet, rubbing my hands together. What if Ben was in a meeting? What if he had suddenly decided to meet someone for a drink or go out for dinner or a movie? I tried to think of somewhere else to go. I started to compile a list of friends I might drop in on. Abigail Devereaux, the Flying Dutchwoman, wandering from house to house in search of food and a bed for the night. People would be hiding behind their sofas when I rang the bell. By the time Ben walked up the steps, I was feeling thoroughly sorry for myself.

He looked startled as I stepped out of the shadows, and I immediately tried to apologize for being there, and then, in the middle of my apology, I began to cry and was immediately angry with myself for being so pathetic and tried to apologize for crying. So now Ben was standing on the steps outside his flat with a crying woman. Worse and worse. In the midst of it all Ben managed both to put his arm round me and get his keys out of his pocket and unlock the door. I started an explanation of what had happened at Jo’s flat but, whether because I was shivering with cold or whether saying it out loud made me realize how frightened I had been, I was unable to speak coherently. Ben just murmured words into my ear and led me up to the bathroom. He turned on the bath taps. He started to pull down zips and unfasten buttons on my clothes.

‘I like the jacket,’ he said.

‘I was cold,’ I said.

‘No, really.’

He pulled my clothes over my head and eased my trousers down my legs and over my feet. I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Red-faced from the cold, red-eyed from crying. I looked raw, as if my skin had been peeled off with my clothes. The hot water of the bath stung at first, then felt wonderful. I wanted to live in that bath for ever, like a primeval swamp animal. Ben disappeared and came back with two mugs of tea. He placed them both on the side of the bath. He started to take his clothes off. This was nice. He got in with me, entangling his legs with mine, and he behaved like a complete gentleman: he sat at the end with the taps. He draped a flannel over them so that he was able to lie back without being in total discomfort. My mouth was working again and I managed to give him a fairly composed account of my escape, if that’s what it had been.

He looked genuinely startled. ‘Fuck,’ he said, which struck the right note. ‘You climbed out of the back window?’

‘I didn’t open the door and ask him in for tea.’

‘You’re absolutely sure it was him?’

‘I’ve been desperately trying to think of any other explanation. If you can come up with one, I would be so grateful.’

‘It’s a pity you didn’t get a look at him.’

‘Jo’s front door doesn’t have a peephole. There was the additional problem that I was having a heart-attack from fear. I have to admit that there was a part of me that almost wanted to lie down and wait for him to come and get me so that it would all be over.’

Ben took another flannel and draped it over his face. I heard a sort of murmuring from under it.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

He pulled the flannel away. ‘What?’ he asked.

‘About all this. It’s bad enough for me, but I can’t do anything about that. I’m sorry that you’ve been landed with it as well. Maybe we met at the wrong time.’

‘You shouldn’t say sorry.’

‘I should. And I’m also saying it in advance.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Because I’m about to ask you for a favour.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘I was going to ask you to go to Jo’s flat and get my stuff for me.’ Ben looked so unhappy at this that I immediately rushed into a desperate explanation. ‘Because I obviously can’t go there myself. I can’t go there ever again. He might be watching from outside. But you’ll be fine. He’s only looking for me. He might assume that he’s got the wrong flat.’

‘Right,’ said Ben, looking even less happy. ‘Yes, of course, I’ll do it.’

The atmosphere had definitely changed. We didn’t talk for a bit.

‘Are you all right?’ I said, eager to break the silence.

‘This wasn’t what I planned,’ he said.

‘I know, I know, it would have been easier for you if you’d met somebody who wasn’t involved in something like this.’

‘That’s not what I meant. I was talking about here, in this bath, now. I was planning to help wash you. I would have rubbed you on your shoulders, and then down over your breasts. We would have gone to bed. But now, instead of that, I’m going to get dressed and go out and probably get murdered myself. Or he might torture me to find out where you are.’

‘You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,’ I said.

In the end, Ben phoned up a friend of his, Scud. ‘Not his real name,’ Ben said. Scud worked with computer graphics, but in his spare time, he played club rugby. ‘He’s fifteen stone and a lunatic,’ Ben said. He managed to persuade Scud to come over straight away. ‘Yes, now,’ I heard him say on the phone. Scud arrived fifteen minutes later and he was, as advertised, massive. He looked amused to meet a new woman wearing Ben’s dressing-gown and he was evidently puzzled by the pared-down version of my story that Ben gave him. But he shrugged and said it would be no problem.

I gave a brief description of where my stuff was.

‘And when you leave, make sure you’re not followed,’ I said.

Scud looked at me, apparently alarmed. I’d forgotten that much of what I said made me sound insane to unprepared normal people. Ben pulled a face.

‘You said there’d be no problem.’

‘Not for you. But he might think you’re connected with me and follow you. Just keep an eye out.’

The two men exchanged glances.

Ben was back in less than an hour, an hour in which I drank a tumbler of whisky and flicked through Ben’s glossy magazines. He came in looking as if he had been Christmas shopping. He dumped the bulging carrier-bags on the floor. ‘I owe Scud one,’ he said.

‘What for? Did anything happen?’

‘I owe Scud one for dragging him away from his wife and children in order to rummage around the flat of someone he doesn’t know. And then possibly involving him in criminal activity.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Jo’s front door was open. It had been forced.’

‘But there’s a chain.’

‘It must have been kicked in. The whole frame was broken.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Yes. We weren’t sure what to do. It’s probably not legal to go round a crime scene helping yourself to things that don’t belong to you.’

‘He broke in,’ I murmured, almost to myself.

‘I think I’ve got everything,’ Ben said. ‘Clothes, mainly. Some of the odds and ends you asked for. Your pieces of paper, stuff from the bathroom shelf. I can’t guarantee that some of this isn’t Jo’s. In fact, the more I think about this the less legal it seems.’

‘Great,’ I said, hardly listening.

‘And Jo’s photograph, like you asked.’

He put it on the table and we both looked at it for a moment.

‘I did want to make one comment,’ he said. ‘In fact, more than one. I assume that you’ve got nowhere to stay, so I don’t want to make a big deal of this or presume on anything but you’re welcome to stay here. As long as you want to, basically.’

I couldn’t stop myself. I gave him a hug. ‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘You don’t have to, just because I’m in this helpless state. I’m sure I could find somewhere.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘I don’t want to be like this dismal, needy woman forcing herself on a man who’s too polite to kick her out.’

He put up his hand. ‘Stop,’ he said. ‘Shut up. We should find somewhere to put all this stuff.’

We started going through this odd assortment that I’d gathered over the past days.

‘The other thing I wanted to say,’ he said, while sorting through my underwear, ‘at least I wanted to raise it as a possibility, is that this was just a normal break-in.’

‘What about the person who rang work pretending to be my dad?’

‘I don’t know. There might have been a misunderstanding. Perhaps what you heard at the door was someone breaking in. They rang the door bell, as they do, to check that no one’s home. You didn’t answer, in your normal style. The villain assumes nobody’s home and breaks in. There’s so much of that happening in the area. Just a few days ago, these friends of mine round the corner heard a huge crash in the middle of the night. They went downstairs and exactly the same thing had happened. Someone had kicked the door open and grabbed a bag and a camera. It might have been the same thing.’

‘Was anything taken?’

‘I couldn’t tell. A couple of drawers were open. The VCR was still there.’

‘Hmmm,’ I said sceptically.

Ben looked thoughtful for a moment. He seemed to be thinking so hard that it hurt. ‘What do you want for supper?’ he said.

I liked that. I liked that so much. In the middle of all I was going through, that question as if we were a couple living together. Which we were, as it turned out.

‘Anything,’ I said. ‘Anything you’ve got that’s left over. But, look, Jo’s vanished, someone got my address from Carol under false pretences, there’s a knock at the door. I scoot out of the back and he breaks in. It’s too much.’

Ben stood like a statue, except it was a statue holding a pair of my knickers. I snatched them from him.

‘Tomorrow I’ll call the police,’ he said. ‘Jo’s parents should be back tonight. We’ll speak to them and then, unless they’ve got good news, we’ve got to report her missing.’

I put my hand on his. ‘Thanks, Ben.’

‘Is that whisky?’ he asked, catching sight of my glass. Well,
his
glass, strictly speaking.

‘Yes, sorry,’ I said. ‘I was in urgent need of something.’

He picked up the glass and took a gulp from it. I saw his hand was shaking.

‘Are you all right?’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘You know you said that you thought we might have met at the wrong time? I hope that’s wrong. Things feel right in all sorts of ways. But I’m afraid that I’m not really the person who’s going to be able to fight anybody off, take a bullet for you. I think I’m afraid, to be honest.’

I kissed him, and our hands felt for each other.

‘Most people wouldn’t say that,’ I said. ‘They’d just find an excuse not to have me in the house. But at the moment I’m interested in your plan.’

‘What plan?’

‘The one that began with you washing my shoulders. We can miss out the washing bit.’

‘Oh, that plan,’ he said.

Twenty-two

‘Listen. I woke up and I couldn’t get back to sleep and I’ve been thinking. You know how it is when you just lie there in the dark and thoughts whirl round and round your head? Anyway, this is how it is. He’s after me, but I’m after him too. I’ve got to get to him before he gets to me. Agreed?’ I was sitting at Ben’s kitchen table in one of his shirts, dipping brioche into coffee. Outside, there was frost on the grass. The kitchen smelt of fresh bread and hyacinths.

‘Maybe,’ he said.

‘So what does he know about me? He knows my name, what I look like, more or less, where I lived until a couple of weeks ago, where I stayed until yesterday, where I work. Or worked. Right, what do I know about him?’ I paused for a moment to drink some coffee. ‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing at all. A blank. Except there’s one thing in my favour. He doesn’t know that I know he’s after me. He thinks he can just creep up behind me, but actually we’re like children in that game when you circle round the tree, each pursuing the other and fleeing from them at the same time. But he thinks I don’t know he’s coming to get me. If you see what I mean.’

‘Abbie…’

‘There’s something else too. I’m not just following him, or at least intending to follow him, once I know where to start. I’m following me — the me I can’t remember, I mean. Like Grandmother’s Footsteps.’

‘Hang on…’

‘Maybe Grandmother’s Footsteps isn’t quite right. But presumably the me that I can’t remember may have tried to find out where Jo was. I would have done, wouldn’t I? If I’m doing it now I would have done it then. Don’t you think it’s a possibility? That’s what I was thinking.’

‘What time did you wake this morning?’

‘About five, I think. My mind was racing. What I need is a piece of solid evidence I can take to Cross. Then they’ll start the investigation and protect me and everything will be fine. So if I retrace my footsteps, which were retracing Jo’s footsteps, then I may end up where I ended up before.’

‘Which, if you remember what happened to you, doesn’t sound like a good idea at all.’

‘The problem, of course, is that I can’t retrace my footsteps because I can’t remember them.’

‘Do you want some more coffee?’

‘Yes, please. And I don’t know what Jo’s footsteps were either. But, anyway, there was only a small amount of time between when she disappeared and when I was grabbed. I’m sure of that at least, because I know from Peter she was around on Wednesday morning, and I disappeared on Thursday evening.’

‘Abbie.’ Ben took both of my hands and held them between his own. ‘Slow down a bit.’

‘Am I gabbling?’

‘It’s ten past seven and we went to sleep late. I’m not at my sharpest.’

‘I’ve been thinking I need to follow up the cat.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Jo was going to get a kitten. Her neighbour in the downstairs flat told me that. She’d bought everything for it, and I’m guessing she was just about to get it. If I could find out where she was going to get it from — well, anyway, I can’t think of anything else to do. I have to begin somewhere.’

‘So now you’re planning to track down a cat?’

‘I’ll ask at the pet shop and the post office, where they pin up notices. The vet, too. They often have notices, don’t they? It’s probably pointless, but if you’ve any better ideas I’d love to hear them.’

Ben looked at me for a long, long time. I imagined him thinking: Is this worth it? Because I did have some insight into my condition: I might have been babbling but at least I knew I was babbling.

‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to pick up some letters at the office. I’ll give some instructions to the guys. I’ll be back here mid-morning and we can do it together.’

‘Really?’

‘I don’t like the thought of you wandering around on your own.’

‘You don’t have to do this, you know. You’re not responsible for me or anything.’

‘We talked about this last night. Remember?’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Very much.’

‘So, what are you going to do while I’m gone?’

‘I’m going to call Cross again, though I can’t imagine he’ll be very pleased to hear from me.’

‘You have to, though.’

‘I know.’

∗

‘I’ll call Jo’s parents’ house from work. There was no reply yesterday evening. We should go and see them before I contact the police.’

‘Yes. Oh dear.’

‘I know.’

Ben left before eight. I had a scalding shower and made myself another cup of coffee. Then I called Cross, but was told he wouldn’t be back in his office till the afternoon. I almost cried with impatience. Half a day is a long time when you feel every minute might count.

I had a couple of hours before Ben returned. I cleared up the kitchen and changed the sheets on the bed. His house was more grown-up than anything I was used to. It struck me that Terry and I had lived a bit like students. Everything in our lives had seemed temporary, where and how we lived just arrangements we’d stumbled into. We’d got by, but messily and, in the end, violently. Ben’s life was stable and considered. He was doing the job he wanted to do; he lived in a lovely house, where each room was painted a different colour and was full of carefully chosen objects. I opened his wardrobe. He had just two suits, but they looked expensive. His shirts hung neatly on their hangers, above three pairs of leather shoes. Things don’t just happen to him, I thought. He chooses them. And he chose me, and he’d missed me when I’d gone. I shivered with pleasure.

He came back just after ten. I was waiting for him, dressed in warm clothes and with a notebook in my bag. I also had the photograph of Jo, which I thought might jog people’s memories.

‘Jo’s parents aren’t back till tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I spoke to the dog-sitter again. They spent an extra night in Paris. We should drive over to their place in the afternoon. It’s not far, just on the other side of the M25.’

‘That’ll be grim.’

‘Yes,’ he said. For a moment, his face was wiped of all expression. Then he said, with forced cheeriness, ‘All right. Cat time.’

‘You’re sure you’re up for this? I mean, it’s probably a wild-goose chase. Wrong metaphor.’

‘I’ll have you for company.’ He wrapped an arm round me and we went out to his car. I briefly remembered my own car, stuck in a bloody pound somewhere, but pushed away the thought. I could deal with all of those things later. Friendships, family, work, money (chronic lack of), tax forms, parking tickets, overdue library books, everything had to wait.

We parked in a small street a few hundred yards away from Jo’s flat. We’d planned to make a circuit of the area, stopping off at every newsagent’s that had cards in the window. It was a boring, frustrating business. The vet’s was a dead end. Nobody in the shops recognized Jo’s photo, and only a few had cards advertising pets.

After nearly two hours, I had written down three telephone numbers. When we went back to the car, Ben phoned them on his mobile. Two of the cards turned out to have been put up in the last few days so were irrelevant. The other card had been up for longer and, when Ben rang the number, the woman said that there was still one kitten without a home but we probably wouldn’t want it.

She lived on the estate just round the corner so we called in on her. The kitten was a tabby and still tiny. The woman, who was very tall and solid, said it had been the runt of the litter and remained fragile. She had to admit that it also seemed to have something wrong with its eyesight. It bumped into things, she said, and stepped in its food. She picked it up and it sat in her large, calloused hand and mewed piteously.

I took Jo’s photo out of my bag and showed it to her. ‘Did our friend come round here asking about kittens?’ I asked.

‘What?’ She put the tabby on the floor and peered at it. ‘No, not that I know of. I’d remember, I’m sure. Why?’

‘Oh, it’s too long a story,’ I said, and she didn’t press me. ‘We’ll be going, then. I hope you find your kitten a home.’

‘I won’t,’ she said. ‘Nobody wants a blind cat, do they? I’ll just have to take it to the cat sanctuary. Betty’ll take her in.’

‘Cat sanctuary?’

‘Well, it’s not really a sanctuary, that sounds too official. But she’s cat-mad. Bonkers. She lives for cats; they’re all she cares about. She takes in all the strays. She must have about fifty, and they’re breeding all the time. Her house is only small as well. It’s a sight, really. It must drive her neighbours mad. Maybe you should go there if you’re looking for a kitten.’

‘Where does she live?’ I asked, taking out my notebook.

‘Down Lewin Crescent. I don’t know the number but you can’t miss it. Poky little place and the upstairs windows are all boarded up. It looks deserted.’

‘Thanks.’

We went back to the car.

‘Lewin Crescent?’ asked Ben.

‘We may as well, now we’re here.’

We found the place on the
A–Z
and drove there. It was wonderfully cosy in the car, but outside it was cold and the wind was a knife. Our breath plumed into the air. Ben took my hand and smiled down at me; his fingers were warm and strong.

The house was certainly dilapidated. There were weeds and frosted, rotten sunflowers by the front door, and the dustbin was overflowing. A wide crack ran up the wall and the paint on the window-ledges was coming away in large flakes. I pressed the bell but couldn’t hear it ring, so I knocked hard as well.

‘Listen,’ said Ben. Through the door I could hear mews, hisses, a strange scratching. ‘Have I told you I’m allergic to cats? I get asthma and my eyes go red.’

The door opened on a chain and the sound grew louder. A face peered through.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Sorry to bother you.’

‘Is it the council?’

‘No. We’ve just come because we were told you have lots of cats.’

The door opened a bit more. ‘Come in, then — but be careful they don’t get out. Quick!’

I don’t know what hit us first, the wall of heat or the smell of meaty cat food, ammonia and shit. There were cats everywhere, on the sofa and the chairs, curled up near the electric heater, lying in soft brown heaps on the floor. Some were washing themselves, some were purring, a couple were hissing at each other, backs arched and tails twitching. There were bowls of food by the kitchen door, and three or four cat-litter trays next to them. It was like an obscene version of a Walt Disney film. Ben hung back by the door, looking appalled.

‘It’s Betty, isn’t it?’ I asked. I was trying not to wince. A cat was winding itself round my legs.

‘That’s right. You should know.’

Betty was old. Her face had folded. Her neck sagged. Her fingers and her wrists were blue. She was dressed in a thick blue shift with several buttons missing, and she was covered in cat hair. She had shrewd brown eyes, peering out from her wrecked face.

‘We were told you take in stray cats and that sometimes you give them to people in search of a pet,’ I said.

‘I have to be sure it’s to a good home,’ she said sharply. ‘I’m not easily satisfied. I don’t just give them to anybody, I keep saying.’

‘We think a friend of ours might have been here,’ I said, and produced the photo of Jo.

‘Of course she did.’

‘When?’ I took a step forward.

‘You do go round and round in circles, don’t you? But she wasn’t right. She seemed to think you can just let a cat wander in and out as they please. Do you know how many cats get killed by cars each year?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t. So you didn’t want her to have one of your cats?’

‘She didn’t seem too keen anyway,’ said Betty. ‘As soon as I said I had my doubts about her, she was out of the door.’

‘And you can’t remember when it was?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Midweek? Weekend?’

‘It was the day the bin-men come. They were clattering around outside when she was here.’

‘What day’s that?’

‘That would be a Wednesday.’

‘So, a Wednesday,’ said Ben, still standing up against the front door. ‘Do you know what time?’

‘I don’t know why you have to be so pushy.’

‘It’s not that we’re —’ I began.

‘Morning or afternoon?’ asked Ben.

‘Afternoon,’ she said grudgingly. ‘They usually come when I’m giving the cats their tea. Don’t they, pussies?’ she added, addressing the room at large, which seemed to shift and ripple with the movement of cats.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

‘That’s what you said last time.’

I froze with my hand on the door handle. ‘Did I come here before?’

‘Of course you did. On your own, though.’

‘Betty, can you tell me when I came?’

‘No need to speak so loudly, I’m not deaf. Or stupid. The day after, that’s when you came. Lost your memory, have you?’

‘Home?’ said Ben.

‘Home,’ I agreed, then blushed violently at the word. He noticed and laid a hand on my knee. I turned and we kissed each other very gently, our lips hardly grazing. We kept our eyes open and I could see myself reflected in his pupils.

‘Home,’ he said again. ‘Home to toast and tea.’

Toast and tea, and making love in an unlit room, while outside it grew colder and darker and we held each other for comfort. And for a while we didn’t talk about sombre things, but did what all new lovers do, which was to ask about each other’s past. At least, I asked him.

‘I’ve already told you,’ he said.

‘Have you? You mean, before?’

‘Yes.’

‘Isn’t that odd, to think that I’m carrying all these things inside me — things that were done to me, things you’ve said to me, secrets, gifts — and I don’t know what they are? If I don’t know, is it the same as it never having happened, do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. I traced his mouth with one finger; he was smiling in the darkness.

‘You’ll have to tell me again. Who was before me?’

‘Leah. An interior designer.’

‘Was she beautiful?’

‘I don’t know. In a way. She was half Moroccan, very striking.’

‘Did she live here?’ I asked.

‘No. Well, not really.’

‘How long were you together?’

‘Two years.’

‘Two years — that’s a long time. What happened?’