Never Tell (12 page)

As I pulled into the lane, a prehistoric Jeep nearly took me out on the opposite side. I oversteered and rounded the bend too fast, then felt a lurch, followed by the awful crunch of metal on concrete.

‘I don’t believe this is happening.’ I slammed the steering wheel with my hands. ‘For God’s sake.’

Somehow I managed to manoeuvre the wounded vehicle up onto the verge as a silver BMW, horn blaring, swerved round me, the driver mouthing obscenities through his window. I ignored him with what I considered to be great serenity, and debated my options.

As I fished in my pocket for my phone, a car pulled into the drive from the other end of the lane and I felt my mouth open in surprise.

I was sure my husband had just driven through the gate to Hadi Kattan’s house.

UNIVERSITY, DECEMBER 1991

For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise
.

‘Kubla Khan’
, Coleridge

Two nights later, I’d been studying in the library and then out for a quick drink with Jen. I’d cycled home, slightly drunk, pondering the essay I’d just started on Mary Shelley. My professor had suggested the great Percy Bysshe Shelley had actually written his wife’s classic,
Frankenstein
, to the groans of all the girls present. I wanted something really fresh to say, but my research had turned up nothing so far.

At the lodge I chained my bike and clambered up the stairs to my room. The door was unlocked, which was odd, but I’d been in such a rush earlier, I must have forgotten to lock it.

Peeling a strand of hair away from my pink face, damp from the frenetic cycle home, I threw my coat on the bed and turned on the bedside lamp. The bulb blew with a loud pop.

‘Shit.’ I didn’t have another one. I headed for the light-switch by the door. The door slammed shut in my face and as I moved quickly to open it again, an arm shot out of the shadows and grabbed my wrist. I shrieked in surprise.

‘Don’t scream, precious,’ a low voice whispered. ‘It’s so Hammer House.’

Sweating, my eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. A figure behind the door.

‘My love is like a red, red rose,’ he purred. Something glinted in his right hand. ‘You look well, lovely.’

‘You frightened me.’ My heart was still thudding painfully. After a second or two, I moved to switch the light on.

‘Don’t, please,’ Dalziel said, his hand tightening round my skin. ‘I hate the light. Don’t you have a candle or something?’

‘Somewhere, I think,’ I said, rooting around on the shelf above my bed. He sat on the bed and handed me a lighter.

‘Sorry to have scared you,’ he drawled, though he clearly wasn’t. ‘I missed you, Rose. Nice beads.’

‘Oh,’ I said, suddenly shy. ‘Thanks.’ I wasn’t sure if he was teasing me. ‘They’re like the ones the Inspiral Carpets wear.’

‘I see.’ He was solemn. ‘Nice picture too.’ He pointed at the huge poster of Tim Burgess from The Charlatans above my bed. ‘If you like that sort of thing.’

‘And do you?’ I asked.

‘Not much.’ He flipped the shiny thing in his hand over and again. I realised it was ten-pence coin. ‘Nice lips, though.’

I had a sudden flash of him and the dark boy writhing on the divan.

‘So what are you doing here?’ I asked awkwardly. ‘Not that – I mean,’ I hesitated, ‘I mean, you’re very welcome.’

‘That’s kind, my love. I have to tell you, though, I’m very sad, actually,’ he murmured. ‘Since I heard that you’re not my number-one fan any more.’

‘I never said that.’ I was embarrassed. I sat on the edge of my narrow bed. ‘Who told you that? I haven’t – I haven’t even seen you for weeks.’

‘No, well,’ he pulled something from his pocket, ‘I’ve been quite busy. Finishing my research for my dissertation.’

‘The Christ Church thing, you mean?’ I blushed. ‘Is it true? Did you – did you crap in the cathedral?’

He shrugged, so relaxed I could imagine him slithering to the floor in one fluid move. ‘No.’

‘Who did then?’

‘How the hell do I know? Someone who adores me, clearly.’ He was only half joking.

‘Why do they think you did?’

‘Because they’ve got no imagination. They choose the obvious.’

‘Oh,’ I said, perplexed. ‘Is your dad cross?’

‘Don’t be so naïve,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t give a shit what my father thinks. Literally.’

‘Sorry,’ I stuttered. This boy made me so nervous, surrounded by his aura of expectation. He recovered, flicking his white-blond hair back, and smiled at me, winningly, his face lit as if from inside.

‘Rosie, Rosie. It’s just – I’m so very near. And now I need your help, lovely.’

‘Really?’ I stuttered. I’d forgotten quite how beautiful he was; those girlish dark lashes sweeping down onto porcelain skin, his face fine-boned and pure.

‘We had fun, didn’t we? With the silly underwear thing?’

‘Yes,’ I bit my lip. It
had
been fun. And harmless.

‘Look, tails you help me,’ he flipped the coin into the air, ‘heads I’ll leave you be.’

The coin shone as it spun through the candlelight.

‘Tails it is, lovely.’

But I never saw if it really was. He was reaching into his pocket now, rolling something dark between his fingers, shoving it down into a small pipe and lighting it.

‘Please say you’ll help me, darling.’ He reached over and took my hand, pulling back my sleeve and stroking the skin on my inner arm. I froze at the intimacy, and then I remembered the track marks on Huriyyah’s arm. I laughed shakily.

‘What?’ He looked amused, but didn’t stop stroking my arm. ‘Is that nice?’

Slowly I relaxed, feeling catlike, as if I might start purring.

‘You’ve got beautiful skin, Rosie. Smooth as silk.’

‘I haven’t,’ I stammered. ‘Have I?’

‘Oh, yes.’ He inhaled from his pipe. ‘Try this, lovely.’

‘What is it?’ I eyed it suspiciously. I didn’t recognise the sickly sweet smell. ‘Is it dope?’

‘Yes, it’s dope. Nice bit of Moroccan hashish from a nice Moroccan boy I know.’ He stood up, flipping through the books on my desk. ‘I see you’re studying the Romantics.’

‘Yes.’ I took the pipe. ‘I love Shelley, don’t you? He’s so passionate, I think. I wish I could have met him.’ I inhaled lightly. ‘Can you imagine the conversations between him and Byron and Mary Shelley? God.’ I stopped before I coughed.

‘In
Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree’
. Dalziel threw a book down and turned back to me. ‘Say you’ll join me, Rosie,’ he implored vehemently. ‘I like you. You’d make me so happy.’

‘Join you in what?’ I said. The sweet smoke hit the back of my throat and despite my best efforts, I did cough. I felt gauche but rather elated.

‘Take a proper drag, my love,’ he insisted. ‘You’ll see.
For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise.’

I took another big drag, down down into my lungs and it was both sweet and acrid, and then I contemplated the enormous world map on the wall above my desk, the candle throwing pools of light onto it, which moved endlessly. The map I’d bought from Blackwells on the High Street, the map I’d marked with pins for all the places I wanted to see, the places I needed to visit. I stared at it until it became all hazy and then I thought I really couldn’t sit up any more, my body felt so heavy and soft. I fell back onto the bed, thinking this wasn’t like any dope I’d ever smoked before.

I closed my eyes; I couldn’t keep them open. I felt sick briefly and then it passed and I realised I was having some kind of vision. The dreams came quickly until I didn’t know if I was awake or sleeping. I dreamed I was Mary Shelley, running barefoot by an Italian lake in a long skirt that swished around my ankles, with Dalziel sitting inside a villa, watching at a desk and he was smiling, iron bolts instead of ears just like Mary Shelley’s monster.

At some point Dalziel fed me some more and then I thought I slept until I dreamed I was flying around the map of the world.

Much later I awoke, as if from the deepest sleep. The neon red of my clock radio said it was four o’clock and I couldn’t work out if that was day or night. I was wedged in between the wall and a warm body; slowly I realised that Dalziel was lying beside me on the bed and I had no idea what had just happened. I gazed at him, almost unseeing, until eventually he opened one sleepy eye.

‘All right, lovely?’ he said. ‘Enjoy the trip?’

‘Oh God, Dalziel,’ I mumbled. ‘That was amazing.’

‘Not bad, is it?’

‘What was it?’

‘Don’t you know?’

I shook my head.

‘God’s own medicine.’

‘Oh.’ I was none the wiser.

‘That, my precious, was the poppy. Coleridge and your friend Percy’s favourite friend, to name a few fans.’

‘Opium?’

He smiled beatifically, and shut his eyes again.

I lay on the bed and all I knew was I’d seen sights I’d never seen before.

* * *

For the next few days I spent every waking hour that I was allowed to with Dalziel. Sometimes he would just disappear and I would cycle past his house in the hope the lights would be on but they never were – until he would turn up somewhere unexpected to collect me, and my heart would leap with anticipation. Nothing sexual had ever happened between us and I didn’t really care; I was attracted to him, undoubtedly, but in truth, I was happy just to enjoy his company. He radiated light a little like the sun; I was happy to absorb his warmth, although there were a few too many of us satellites to make it entirely comfortable.

At first the only place we went together was to my little room on the second floor, but after a while he took me back to his house, so unlike the digs of any of my other friends, and I imagined it was because he finally trusted me. It was less a theatrical set than the first time I’d been there, though still minimal in the extreme. The furniture looked expensive and the paintings on the walls by people I’d actually heard of. On the wall in the hall by the unused kitchen were two black-and-white photographs of a couple of beautiful children; I assumed they were Dalziel’s siblings. But he refused to be drawn on his family and I soon gave up asking. I was simply happy to be with him, and deep down I felt like I was blessed to have been chosen. Jen and Liz thought I spent too much time with him, and James was constantly sulking whenever we all spent the evening together, but I didn’t care.

How could I explain the grip Dalziel held me in? The long sleepless nights soaring above the planes of my imagination until I never wanted to return to earth. I loved him, I knew that. ‘You have a sad mouth, Rose,’ he said dreamily. ‘That’s why I knew we would be such friends.’

He told me stories of his childhood, about rowing on the lake in his father’s grounds, and hiding in trees when his nanny looked for him, desperately calling his name until he relented. One night when he was very stoned Dalziel talked about a puppy he once lost: he said he’d let it out at night; it had belonged to his sister and it had annoyed him, he said, for some reason, but he felt forever guilty when it disappeared. After that admission he fell silent and refused to talk again until the next day.

I asked him about Society X and he admitted it was really just a game that he had started because he was bored. ‘I had a point to prove once, I think,’ he said, ‘but I seem to have forgotten what it is right now.’ And we laughed, slightly feverishly.

I had accepted we would never become lovers – I knew deep down that he usually preferred boys – but he made me feel like I was different: special, intelligent – beautiful, even. ‘Your skin is all creamy,’ he whispered, stroking my hair as I lay beside him. And I had spent so long waiting to be accepted, and I knew now I was part of something great. Something the other students could only look on and dream of themselves, something they were not privy to. We were the lucky ones.

‘Little dreamer’, Dalziel called me when we were alone. ‘You’re always hoping to step outside real life, aren’t you?’ and he was right. The lure of the opium for me was finding myself in deserts with Byron or sailing the seas of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner. The world was opening up for me in more ways than one, and I wanted more.

Chapter Six
GLOUCESTERSHIRE, MARCH 2008

My poor wounded car just about made it back to the village after the incident at Albion Manor. I kept wondering if it had been James’s Audi I’d seen at the gate, but then Fred and Effie were waiting at the nursery door, their chubby faces beaming, and some kind of peace settled over me like a thin blanket. I watched them padding across the grass with a huge drawing of superheroes fluttering between them, Effie’s hat slipping over her face so she could hardly see where she ran.

‘We thought you wasn’t coming, Mummy,’ Freddie said. ‘But Mrs Foster said you’d only be a mimit.’

I gathered them to me. ‘I’m sorry, baby. I won’t be late again, I promise.’

‘Mummy,’ said Effie, freeing herself impatiently, ‘I’m vegetarian, aren’t I?’

‘Are you now?’ I kissed her cheek. ‘That’s nice.’

‘I’m not vegetarian,’ Fred said scornfully. ‘I’m English.’

I laughed and kissed their shiny heads, tucking them into the car beneath the frosting of cherry blossom on the roof. I looked at them and closed the door, thinking of Danny Callendar’s words, thinking uncomfortably of the man being marched to the house, the sly boot in the ribs. I had been warned off, and right now, it made absolute sense to stay away. I’d made a silent promise to the children, to the unborn Alicia after I was threatened in LA during my first pregnancy, that I’d never put their lives or my own in danger again; that I wouldn’t choose the story over safety any more.

‘I’m going to Vietnam next week,’ James said, feet up on the kitchen table.

‘Oh?’ I put a plate of slightly singed macaroni cheese in front of him, which he ignored, flicking the television on. ‘Get us a beer, petal, would you?’

‘Why Vietnam?’ I opened the fridge.

‘To talk about opening a branch of the club out there. Saigon’s the new Bangkok, didn’t you know?’ He wasn’t looking at me, but at the screen behind me. ‘Oh, goal!’