‘I’ll get one at the station when I arrive.’
He frowned. ‘Hari might have one. Hang on, I’ll look.’
I followed him to the battered roll-top desk in the corner of the room. ‘Why would Hari have a street plan of Oxford? Has he ever been to Oxford?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Ganesh. ‘But you know Hari. He keeps everything, just in case it turns out to be useful one day. We’ve loads of junk around the place with zero chance of any of it being useful. He’s like a perishing squirrel. He’s got dozens of street plans. I don’t know where they all came from.’
He burrowed in the desk and from a pigeon-hole dragged a pack of tattered town street maps. ‘Here we go. Coventry, Bath, East Grinstead . . .’ He shuffled the stack. ‘Here we are, Oxford, see?’ He held up a mangled bunch of papers held together by yellowing sticky tape.
I took it from him in disbelief and carefully opened it out. It looked like something Bonnie had been chewing. The cover price was fifteen pence and inside the cover a hotel in a central city position was advertising bed and breakfast for the price a sandwich costs today. The map had to be over thirty years old. But it was Oxford all right. Ganesh and I spread it on the table and looked for the street in which the B and B was located into which I was booked by Mickey.
‘Here,’ said Ganesh, pointing. ‘This little street here off the Iffley Road.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to mend this. Will Hari mind if I borrow it?’
‘He’ll be delighted. It will prove he was right to keep it and all the others in the first place. Hang on, I’ve got something else you ought to take with you.’
He vanished into another room and came back holding out a small oblong object, a mobile phone. Now, I know everyone these days has a mobile, but I don’t, right? I haven’t got anyone to call on it and if I ever do, there’s a payphone in the hallway of the house where I live. I wasn’t aware Ganesh owned one, either.
‘Since when?’ I asked, pointing at it.
He had the grace to look mildly embarrassed. ‘They’re cheap enough. It’s the pre-pay sort, so there’s about ten quid’s worth of call time already on it. It won’t cost you a thing. It will mean you can get in touch with me if you need to. Look, this is how you switch it on. Press this button here when someone calls and press it again when the call is finished.’
‘Does Hari know you’ve got it?’ I asked innocently, taking the little phone from him.
‘Well, no.’ Ganesh was beginning to sound cross at my questions. ‘You know how he is about anything new - except that ruddy rocket. He always grumbles about cost but it’s my money, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is!’ I agreed. ‘Thanks, Ganesh, just the thing.’ I pocketed it.
Ganesh looked pleased. I understood why he had bought it. Ganesh feels that living here with Hari, and working all day every day in the shop, the modern world is leaving him behind. Things are made worse by the fact that his brother-in-law, Jay, is an accountant and has what’s called a career. The answer, I always tell him, is to walk out of the shop and make his own life. He always replies that I don’t understand. (That’s when he isn’t replying, all right, what about the dry-cleaning business?) The truth is, it’s always easier to solve other people’s problems than your own. Ganesh knows the answer to mine, and I know the answer to his. I don’t listen to him. He doesn’t listen to me. But we talk about things, and that’s what matters.
Beneath our feet the floor quivered as Hari assaulted it again with the broom handle. The look of pleasure was wiped from Ganesh’s face. ‘Listen to that,’ he muttered. ‘Nobody knows what I’ve got to put up with!’ He reached back into the desk and took out a roll of sticky tape which he handed to me. ‘Help yourself.’ He stomped out.
I mended the street plan as best I could and then went to the kitchenette and washed the mugs. On my way out through the shop, Ganesh stopped me. ‘When are you leaving?’
‘Now, I suppose. Mickey’s given me the money to buy a train ticket. I can’t waste time. I want Bonnie back before Ivo gets his hands on her.’
‘Wait until tonight,’ he begged. ‘Then I can come with you and at least satisfy myself about the place you’re staying in.’
I shook my head. ‘I can manage, honestly. I’ll just go to the address, spend a bit of time trying to find her and, if I do, give her Mickey’s message. If she won’t come back I’ll try and get her to phone him, at least. Then I’ll return here and try and persuade him to give back Bonnie. My big worry is that Lisa won’t be at her parents’ house. Then what do I do? I can’t go to Mickey completely empty-handed. ’
Hari popped out from behind a rack of greetings cards. ‘Oxford!’ he chirruped. ‘Dreaming spires, isn’t it? You won’t lose my excellent street plan?’
‘I’ll look after it, I promise.’
‘I have always thought,’ continued Hari, ‘that those flat boats look very unsafe. Punts, they are called. Do not go in such a punt. You can fall out.’ This was more the old Hari I knew, never looking on the bright side. Much more in his nature than a sudden addiction to plastic rockets.
‘I promise that, too, Hari,’ I told him. ‘I won’t go in any punts.’
‘You falling out of a punt is the least of my worries,’ growled Ganesh. ‘At least leave me the address of this B and B.’
I scribbled it down for him and he stuck it in his pocket. He walked out of the shop with me and stood on the sunny doorstep gloomily contemplating the space rocket which waited in solitary splendour for custom. I left him to it and wondered how long it would continue to dominate the pavement before either Hari decided it wasn’t making money or Ganesh blew a fuse and insisted on its removal. You see why I don’t want to go into business? You spend your life worrying about a flying ice lolly.
At home again, the flat seemed horribly empty without Bonnie scampering to meet me as I opened the door. In the kitchen her brown pottery water bowl, helpfully printed with the word DOG, stood filled. Near it lay what was left of a rubber bone scored by her sharp little teeth. I averted my eyes from both and hurried to put my toothbrush and a change of underwear, clean jeans and a shirt in a bag. Then, although the weather was a little warm for it, for good measure I added my best blazer bought in a charity shop, just in case I needed to look respectable. The sooner I got going, delivered my message and, with luck, persuaded the runaway at least to phone Mickey, then the sooner I’d be back here and Harry could bring Bonnie home.
Harry
would
bring her home. I must never allow myself to doubt that. As for Allerton, I shook my fist in a useless threat and addressed the empty air. ‘Just you wait, Mickey Allerton, I’ll get you for this, you’ll see!’
Call it childish bravado or just my dramatic training expressing itself, it made me feel better. Buoyed up by unrealistic visions of future vengeance, and armed with Hari’s museum piece of a street plan, I made my way to Paddington Station.
I came up from the Tube into the sprawling cavern of the normally busy mainline station. Now it was between the morning and evening peak travel times and relatively deserted. I found the computerised timetable display and discovered I’d just missed a train.
‘Shit,’ I said aloud. ‘Nothing’s going right.’
I was dimly aware that a small dark-haired young woman in a short skirt and cherry-red jacket was standing next to me, staring up at the same screen. As I spoke, she glanced at me curiously and a touch sharply. I’m accustomed to smartly dressed people looking at me in a critical way and it doesn’t worry me. As it happened, that day I didn’t look too scruffy in my opinion. I wore clean jeans and shirt and with my last pay packet from my defunct job had even invested in new trainers. Still, she probably thought I was one of those lost souls who wander about London holding endless conversations with unseen companions. What did she know about it? I thought rebelliously. I bet she didn’t have my worries. I was allowed to talk to myself.
However, I retreated to the semi-privacy of the screened off Heathrow Check-In area where I bought myself a coffee and, suddenly realising it was early afternoon and I’d missed my lunch, a tuna sandwich to go with it. I took them to a table and sat down to study Hari’s street plan.
Oxford’s mainline station where I’d arrive was to the west of the city centre. The B and B where I’d be lodging was situated off the Iffley Road to the south-east, well out of the city centre. With some difficulty I located the road where the Stallards lived and that, wouldn’t you know it, was in a large residential area to the north of the centre. Without transport, I was going to have to rely on the buses or do an awful lot of walking. In the present heatwave, that didn’t sound like a good idea.
It was time to go for the train. I folded the map away and got up. At a nearby table, the dark girl in the cherry-red jacket got up too. I suspected she meant to catch the same train and while that could be no more than a coincidence, and probably was, I didn’t like it. My nerves were pretty jumpy. I didn’t need strangers taking an unhealthy interest in my plans.
I resisted the urge to turn my head and check whether Cherry Jacket was walking behind me as I strode purposefully to the platform where the train stood waiting. Look confident, Fran, and you’ll feel confident! I told myself. People don’t mess with you if you look on top of things. I stepped into a coach through the open doors and now risked a glance outside. It was nearing the time of departure and the hurrying crowd of would-be passengers scurried past with expressions of pale-faced intensity. You could see the indecision on some: jump on now and walk through the coaches to find a seat or carry on down the platform and risk the doors closing and shutting them out. They were like a mass of disturbed beetles. Among them I caught a fleeting impression of tight black leggings and a pink top which plucked a chord in my memory. Before I could focus on that, Cherry Jacket walked past the open doors without a glance. But I sensed she’d seen me.
She must have got in the same coach at the further end. I wasn’t surprised to encounter her walking towards me as I was making my way up the central aisle looking for a seat. We met halfway and exchanged glances of recognition. She smiled. I scowled and pushed my bag up on to the luggage rack. She wasn’t put off, however, shoved her briefcase in alongside my bag and took the seat opposite me.
Although the train was filling up fast there were still plenty of free places and I felt vaguely annoyed that she’d chosen to put herself right in my line of sight. Fortunately someone had left a copy of a tabloid paper on the seat next to me so I picked it up and buried my nose in it.
It only takes so long to read a tabloid. Even after I’d done the crossword we still had some time to go before reaching Oxford. I got out the street plan again. My travelling companion spoke.
‘Visiting Oxford for the first time?’ she asked pleasantly.
I debated whether to ignore her but I had no call to be rude to her, after all. ‘Yes,’ I said shortly, hoping she’d leave it at that.
‘Will you be going up to the university in the new term?’
That took me aback. ‘No,’ I faltered. ‘I’m just visiting a friend.’
She smiled kindly at me with exceptionally regular white teeth, like a toothpaste commercial. ‘It’s a lovely city,’ she said. ‘You’ll like it.’
‘Yeah,’ I muttered, ‘I’m sure I will.’
She wasn’t put off by lack of encouragement. ‘I mean,’ she went on, ‘it’s got its boring areas and slightly dodgy ones, the parts you wouldn’t put on a tourist schedule, but you’ll find it’s got so much to see, the colleges and churches and the parks. I hope you’ll have the time to do it all.’
Now, I’m not stupid and this was a way of asking me how long I planned to stay in the city. ‘Yes,’ I said in a manner I hoped finished off the conversation.
She seemed to take the hint and didn’t speak again, not until we’d arrived and both stood up to take our luggage from the overhead rack.
‘Good luck,’ she said.
It was a casual remark, meaning little. But in my circumstances, which she couldn’t know, it struck an ironic note and I must have shown something of this in my face because before she moved out into the central aisle, she gave me another of those curious sharp looks.
The area outside the station was busy. It had been a hot day here too; the sun still shone brightly and the air shimmered with heat radiating from the buildings behind me. I looked round for a bus stop and debated whether to splurge some of the spending money Mickey had given me on a taxi.
A car rolled to a stop beside me, the window whirred down and a by-now-familiar smile was turned on me again. ‘Waiting for your friend?’
‘Yes!’ I snapped.
‘Not shown up? I can offer you a lift.’
‘I don’t need a lift,’ I snarled. I was beginning to put the pieces of the jigsaw together. ‘I told you, I’m waiting for somebody.’