Authors: Nicci French
Chapter Twenty-nine
Mick was sitting at the table and Astrid was at the stove. She was wearing blue jeans and a light brown T-shirt. She was barefooted again, leaning up to reach a saucepan down from a high shelf. The effort pulled her shirt up, exposing the smooth brown skin of her lower back.
‘Sorry,’ I said, turning to go.
‘That’s all right,’ said Astrid. ‘Join us.’
I thought of my instruction manual. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
She laughed. ‘I’m cooking one of my special recipes. Pasta accompanied by spicy red pesto bought from a deli, sprinkled with cheese, plus red wine.’
‘Sounds fantastic,’ I said.
‘It is,’ said Astrid. ‘Even I can’t fuck it up.’
I found Mick disconcerting. He was like a smooth wall that provided no fingerholds. He didn’t seem to find it awkward to stay silent. He looked at me for a moment, then got up and collected plates, forks and glasses, three of each. He took a bottle of red wine from a carrier-bag on the floor, opened it and poured some into each glass. I picked up mine.
‘Cheers,’ I said, too quickly. Astrid was stirring pasta in the saucepan and Mick just stared at his glass. It felt like an awkward moment but then Astrid smiled, picked up hers and took a gulp from it.
‘Mick and I were talking about travelling,’ she said. ‘Have you done much, Davy?’
Lying is like a really good tool. It’s a tool for manipulating people, for controlling them. You can tell them what they want to hear; you can make them think you’re a particular person. The point of lying is to have different lies for different people. Different people
need
different lies, the way that different jobs need different tools. If you have just one lie for everyone, you might as well tell the truth because the truth is much easier. If you’re telling the truth, you don’t need to think because the truth automatically fits together neatly. Lies aren’t like that. You have to make them fit. And you have to remember which lie you’re telling at any particular time, and to whom, and if it fits with every other lie you’ve told and whether anything could happen, today, tomorrow or the day after to expose it. Knowing when not to lie is part of the skill. I knew, I just knew, that Mick and Astrid were talking about travelling because they had both done a lot. And I would so much like to have said yes, so that I would have been part of the club. But then they would ask where and I would name some place, and it would turn out that one of them had been there and it would go terribly wrong. It would only take something as small as that to ruin everything in the house and force me to leave.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Round Europe mainly,’ said Astrid. ‘India, a bit in the Far East, Australia. Nothing like Mick.’
‘Where have you been, then?’ I said to Mick.
He made a dismissive gesture. ‘I just got back from Latin America,’ he said. ‘I was there a couple of years.’
I thought of my book, my manual on how to be a real person. Bring people out, it advised. There’s no such thing as a bore. All a good talker needs is a good listener.
‘What’s the best place you went to?’ I asked Mick. ‘Where would you really recommend?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Brazil,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Number one.’ He held up one finger. ‘The rainforest. Two: the Amazon. Three: big, noisy, exciting cities. Four: the dancing. Five: the
cachasa
.’ He started on the fingers of his other hand. ‘Six: the music. Seven: the beaches. Eight: excellent dope.’ This was the most I’d ever heard Mick say, but he continued. ‘Then there’s the women.’
‘Number nine on your list,’ I said lightly, pleased to see Astrid grinning, but Mick scowled as if I was mocking him.
‘They’re the most amazing women in the world. Present company excepted.’
‘Oh, shut up, Mick,’ said Astrid, heaping pasta on to the plates.
‘And it’s cheap.’
‘Sounds great,’ I said. ‘How’s your Spanish?’
Mick looked at Astrid.
‘Portuguese, in fact,’ said Astrid. ‘Chile and Peru and the rest speak Spanish.’
‘Yes, I knew that,’ I said. ‘I meant when you were travelling round the rest of South America. Actually, I was thinking of learning Portuguese.’
‘Really?’ said Astrid. ‘Everyone says it’s a lovely language.’
Fuck, I thought. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. I’d told the truth to stop myself looking stupid and I’d made myself look stupid anyway.
The next day I went to the bookshop and found a guide-book to South America. Brazil really did look good. Ten days later, I was sitting in a class at an institute in Clapton with several businessmen, a few white-haired retired men and women and a couple of younger people I couldn’t make out. Introductory Portuguese taught by a middle-aged woman, fat, bespectacled, Portuguese, but not at all the kind of woman Mick had been talking about. Week four. It was late March by now and I’d missed weeks one, two and three but I told the woman in the office I’d catch up.
Several days later, when I met Mick in the hall, I said in a cheery voice, ‘
Bom dia
.’
He looked startled. ‘Is this for real?’
‘I told you I was planning to learn.’
‘Spanish is really more useful,’ he said. ‘Unless you’re planning to go to Brazil. Or Angola or Mozambique.’
‘Or Portugal,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ he said, sounding doubtful. ‘Was it the women? I may have exaggerated about them.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I like the sound of the language.’
Mick’s expression relaxed. ‘I do too,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not taking the piss.
Boa sorte
.’
‘What?’
‘Good luck.’
For the next few weeks, I lived my life happily in compartments. There was the Portuguese compartment, where I was a person planning a project in Brazil. There was the work compartment. Down in Camberwell I was the young apprentice, eager to learn. It was always good to pretend to know less than you really did. I could clearly see that Dario was taking the housemates at Maitland Road for a ride. He was allegedly paying his rent in kind, by doing the house up. It was mainly painting, but he also did a bit of electrics, a bit of carpentry, even some plastering and plumbing. It was a botch job. When he painted a room, he couldn’t be bothered to tape up the wood frames. I mentioned it once but he said it was a waste of time. All that was needed was a steady hand. The result was paint speckles on the woodwork. His carpentry was all ragged edges, protruding screws and ill-fitting joints. If his electrical work was of the same standard, there was probably a risk of fire.
I thought of mentioning it to Miles and provoking a row, but that didn’t fit with the role I was creating. For the moment, I was the perfect housemate, the one who did the washing-up and patched over disagreements. It was always useful to have ammunition that could be used later.
I wanted to get to know the housemates individually. One evening I wandered out into the garden to get a shirt off the line and found Dario in a corner, smoking a joint. He offered it to me and I took a puff.
‘It’s good stuff, isn’t it?’ he said.
It never had much effect on me. I’d always found it difficult to see why it meant so much to other people, why they gave it so much attention. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s really good stuff.’
I handed it back to Dario who took a fearsome drag on it, the tip flaming up.
‘I can get some for you, if you want,’ he said. ‘For a good price. Just say the word.’
I didn’t reply. So that was how he earned his pocket money.
‘But don’t mention it to Miles,’ said Dario, dropping the roach and stamping on it. ‘He’s a bit paranoid about it.’
In the early days, I phoned Astrid’s mobile on a Friday afternoon about some shopping that needed to be done. She suggested we meet up at a pub where she went at the end of the week. When I arrived at the Horse and Jockey, it was full of other despatch riders, spilling out of the doors, overflowing from the pavement on to the road. It was like a huge, bustling party that I hadn’t been invited to, except that I had. I wandered around and found Astrid sitting with a black guy, in his thirties, strongly built, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, head completely shaved. I wondered if he was another boyfriend, but she introduced him to me as Campbell, her ‘so-called boss’. I bought a drink for her and for him, and for another man sitting at her other side and one for myself, and they made room for me at the table. I enjoyed sitting there, watching this strange breed. There were riders in bright yellow tops, like competitors in the Tour de France, and there were scruffy young men in cut-off jeans and vests, and older men, grizzled, deeply tanned, with long hair in dreadlocks or ponytails. I sat and sipped my drink while they joshed each other, gossiped and complained about their clients.
‘The problem,’ said Campbell, returning with another round of drinks, ‘is that they spend their lives cycling from rich person to rich person. They step through the door and they look at these people with their servants and their posh hallway, and then they get back on their bike.’
‘So, do you really hate the people you deliver to?’ I asked Astrid.
She laughed, eyes sparkling, and began to answer, but she was interrupted by Neil, the other man at the table. ‘Basically we’re offering a service, and they’re free to use that service in any way they choose, whether it be to deliver a consignment of valuables or to fetch a hot dog for them.’
Astrid laughed again. ‘And we’re free to say they’re stuck-up bastards with too much money.’
‘Valuables?’ I said.
‘Documents, mainly,’ she said, and winked at Neil. Could he have been another ex-boyfriend?
And then there was Peggy. I treated her as an exercise, a bit like the homework I brought back from my Portuguese class. I found her boring and unattractive, and I wondered what she thought of me. Did she see me as the son she’d never had? Or did she even see me as a fantasy young lover? It was a grotesque thought, but not impossible. Or maybe it was a combination of the two. Mothers often flirt with their sons, although they’d be shocked if you pointed it out to them. And it’s possible that old women don’t see themselves as old. They still have the fantasy that a young man might be attracted to them, that he would see through what they’ve become to what they once were. I found it terrible to think that women like Astrid turned into women like Peggy.
I decided that I would talk to Peggy as if she was a young woman like Astrid, not the old woman she was. I met her in the street a few times over those weeks, and usually she invited me in for tea. The third time, I accepted her offer of a glass of wine. She took a half-full bottle from the fridge. We drank it in her garden because it was warm and the evenings were becoming lighter with each passing day. I sat quite close to her, touching her sometimes as we talked, the way young people do, a hand on an arm to make a point. I saw a glitter in her eyes when I did it, a yes. The funny thing was that when I talked to Peggy pretending she was a young woman, I did better than when I talked to actual young women. It occurred to me that I should talk to young women pretending I was talking to an old woman pretending she was a young woman. Life is complicated.
Each time, when she left me alone in her kitchen for a few minutes, I helped myself to some money. I saw it as a contribution to my other role of generous housemate, coming home with bottles of wine. The third time, on that May evening, I thought we were getting on so well, that she was so grateful for my attention, that I took a bit too much: twenty or thirty pounds. But I thought she wouldn’t mind. It was like a fee for giving her a good time.
I liked the idea of these different lives I was leading, and all the time I felt I was gaining power. The housemates had known each other for longer than I had but I knew so much they didn’t. I had watched them. I had seen inside their rooms. I knew what Dario was doing to the house. I knew what kind of photographs Owen was taking. I knew Margaret Farrell. None of the rest of them knew her or knew I knew her. I had seen Pippa naked. She had seen me naked. That hadn’t worked out. Did it matter? When I met her afterwards, she was exactly as friendly as she had been before. There seemed nothing between us. Had it made her feel sympathy for me? Pity? Contempt? Or did she feel nothing? Certainly there had been other men since me and I doubted that they had failed where I had. I was just another name on the list, except that I wasn’t properly on it. I wondered if I should try to take another chance with her. Except that I might fail again. It was easier for women.
Chapter Thirty
It was weird seeing Astrid fly through the air, and in spite of everything that happened later, the sight remained vivid in my memory: the way she held her hands in front of her as she took off from her bike, as if she was about to do a racing dive into water, and then the way in which she instinctively curled her body, just as parachute jumpers are trained to do before impact. She didn’t look surprised at all; there was just a small frown on her face, as though she had been given a thorny mathematical problem to solve. Even after she hit the road, and her body twisted, her limbs splayed awkwardly and her cheek smashed into the tarmac, her expression remained oddly unflustered. It was as though she was still waiting for the thing that had already happened. For one moment, she closed her eyes and lay quite still in the middle of the road, her bike a tangled mess behind her. I could imagine what she would look like dead.
I had been sitting on the front steps with Dario and a mate of his. It was one of those hot evenings that you know will turn into a hot night, and I had half closed my eyes. I was pretending to be in another world while I listened to Dario haggle – if you can haggle in a whisper – with the other man over the price of whatever it was he had in the plastic bag that he thought I hadn’t noticed under his jacket. I knew Astrid was coming round the corner even before I saw her. And there she was, crouching low on her saddle. And there was Peggy Farrell sitting in her parked car, probably listening to the end of some boring programme on the radio, just a few yards from where I was sitting. She caught sight of me and a curious expression crossed her face, half furtive and half beseeching. It made me feel itchy with irritation and I pretended not to see her. She swung open her door. It was a perfect hit. Astrid: like a bird in the air, like a piece of meat on the ground.
Dario and I rushed over, Dario uttering high-pitched shrieks, but Peggy was there before us. She was apologizing away, while Astrid groaned things like ‘Fuck’ and ‘Leave me alone’. Peggy was about to say something to me, but I stared at her as if she was a stranger and her face crumpled. I bent over Astrid, who looked dazed and was going on about her bike while blood trickled down her face. I wanted to pick her up and hold her, but I knew that even when she was injured she would probably resent this or make me feel stupid and clumsy, so I simply asked her how she was. I put on my most sympathetic face, even though I quickly saw it wasn’t serious. She wouldn’t be rushed off to A and E or bed-ridden and helpless for days, just a bit sore. I knew Peggy was staring at me, waiting for me to acknowledge her, but I continued to behave as if she wasn’t there.
Astrid raised herself, ignoring my outstretched hand, and Dario picked up the battered bike. I saw that Peggy was having difficulty getting the bent door of her car shut. She looked at me for help but I let my contempt show on my face. A red flush stained her cheeks and she looked old and foolish. I turned my back on her and put an arm very carefully round Astrid. She didn’t push me away. She leaned on me. Her hair brushed against my cheek and her blood was on my new white shirt. I could smell her sweat and her shampoo. Dario’s druggie friend walked past us and raised a hand in greeting, and Dario muttered something under his breath.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Astrid.
‘Nobody,’ said Dario. ‘How’s your head?’ Then he threw me a furious glance and started going on about how he and I had been sitting on the steps together when she’d had her accident. So Astrid didn’t know that Dario dealt drugs, which meant that probably no one else in the house did either.
We stumbled towards the house, Dario with the bike, me with Astrid, both of us calling out for Miles, who appeared at the front door. To see the stricken expression on his face, you’d have thought I was carrying Astrid’s corpse. But anyway, we bundled her inside and she was swept up amid exclamations of horror, and I was left standing by the open door with the bike, feeling pissed off with everyone for taking over like that. I tried to hang the bike up on the hook but it was buckled and wouldn’t fit. Pippa came downstairs just as I was saying something about the bike needing some work on it and told me it was Astrid who needed looking after, not the bike, before waltzing off down the stairs with the others to look after the invalid, leaving me on my own. The tightness in my chest increased and I felt the familiar buzzing behind my eyes. Then I saw Peggy coming up the steps.
‘David,’ she said.
‘What?’ I couldn’t be bothered to be polite to her. But instead of looking flustered and embarrassed, as she would normally have done, her chin went up and her expression became stubborn. ‘I need to speak to you.’
‘I don’t have the time,’ I said, and was about to shut the door on her, but she put a hand out and stopped it.
‘I said I need to talk to you.’
From downstairs came the sound of laughter. I looked at Peggy and said, ‘What’s this about?’
‘The other day,’ she said. ‘In my house.’
So she’d seen me take her money. My headache intensified. I felt oppressed and hemmed in, and I grabbed her by the arm and said, ‘Not out here. Come in.’ I pulled her through the door and steered her into Miles’s room, where we wouldn’t be heard, shutting the door behind us.
‘You should have asked me, if you needed money,’ she said.
‘I don’t know what you’re going on about.’
‘I thought you liked my company,’ she said. ‘Stupid of me.’
I told myself to be charming. I tried to speak, but her face, all hurt and spiteful, swam in front of me.
‘You’ve taken money before, haven’t you?’ She didn’t wait for an answer but went on: ‘My husband will think I’m so stupid when I tell him about it, which I’ve decided I must do. He’ll think it serves me right.’
She was going on and on and on about it. I just wanted to shut her up, the gabby, interfering busybody. It was all her fault. Thinking I was the son she’d never had, thinking I found her attractive, thinking I wanted to sit in her dreary little kitchen making eyes at her, believing that was all I was good for and that my life was as petty and wretched as hers. What had she expected would happen? What had she hoped for? What? My grip tightened.
There was still a red mist in front of my eyes and a roaring in my head, but at least her voice had stopped. At least she was limp and I could take my hands away from her throat and lay her on the floor where she gazed up at me, her purple face and glassy eyes, her mouth half open so I could see the fillings in her teeth. Her skirt had ridden up and I bent down to tug it back over her knees.
I heard panting, like the sound made by a thirsty dog, and I realized it was coming from me. I was shivering, almost shaking. I sat down on Miles’s bed and made myself take deep breaths. I had to keep calm. I had to think clearly. I was in Miles’s room and at any moment he might walk in. But if I dragged Peggy’s body out into the hall any of them could come across me. I glanced around: the large cupboards. That was it, I had to put her in there until I had a chance to get rid of the body properly.
Now that I had a plan, I felt quite strong and steady. I could feel the ache in my head receding, like wisps of fog being blown away. Other people would collapse and panic if they found themselves in a situation like this, but I could do it. I opened the cupboard door and pushed the piles of towels and sheets out of the way. I put my hands under Peggy’s armpits and started to drag her across the floor. She was heavy, as if death had climbed into her body and was squatting there. Her shoe caught on the floorboards and spun off. Her head lolled. The most difficult bit was getting her into the cupboard. I had to push her in from behind and her limbs got caught in the doorway and her skirt acted as friction, making her hard to slide. But eventually I did it. I pulled the towels and sheets over her, although even a quick glance would show there was something bulky underneath.
As I shut the door and stood up, the sound of voices and footsteps outside the room made me freeze. But they continued up the next flight of stairs. I waited until I was sure no one was there, then opened the door and slipped out. As soon as I had left, though, I had the feeling I’d forgotten something. Had I put the shoe that had fallen off her foot in with the body? I was almost sure I had but had to fight the temptation to go back in to check. Had I shut the door properly, or would it swing open to reveal the body? Was there anything on me to give me away? I glanced down at my white shirt. There were streaks of oil from the bike. I stood in front of the mirror in the hall. I was impressed by how normal I seemed. I looked good. Fresh-faced and clear-eyed, relaxed. I smiled at myself and went up the stairs to my room. As I passed the bathroom, I could hear taps running and guessed Astrid must be taking a bath. I had a few minutes before I needed to face anyone.
I changed my shirt and splashed aftershave on my face. I took a few deep breaths. There. I thought of Peggy’s body in Miles’s bedroom. Miles, who was nervous about dope being smoked on the premises. It was almost funny. Not almost. It
was
funny. Of course, Miles would only have to open the cupboard and everything would be ruined. But he used it for general storage. I was probably safe for a bit. As soon as possible I had to find a way of getting the body out of the cupboard and out of the house. This was the evening for our long-planned meeting, so I would have to do it somehow while everyone was here. But maybe that was a good thing.
I went up to visit Astrid. There were several people in the room, and I pushed the door and slid quietly in. She was lying down in jogging pants and a T-shirt and Dario was sitting at the bottom of her bed. Mick stood by the window. Pippa was yelling something from the bathroom. There was a party atmosphere, which increased when Miles joined us, sitting by Astrid’s side, his hand not quite touching hers, and Dario lit up a giant spliff.
‘It was all in slow motion,’ said Astrid.
‘You must have fallen in a really natural way,’ I said. ‘That’s why you didn’t get seriously injured. It’s the way they train paratroopers. But you did it naturally.’
Dario took a huge drag of his joint and I watched as the column of ash grew, then crumbled on to the floor, where he put his foot on top of it, grinding it surreptitiously into the carpet.
They were all talking. Mick sat on the bed to examine her. Pippa came in with a bottle of disinfectant. I heard myself saying things. But all the time I was thinking. I felt alert, powerful.
‘I’ll open some wine,’ I said. ‘We should celebrate being together for once.’ I smiled at them all, thinking how amazing, how glorious it was that I had killed someone and hidden her body in the cupboard downstairs and none of them had the slightest idea that anything was wrong. ‘I can’t tell you how happy I am that I’m living here with you all.’
Astrid smiled up at me from the bed, her big, dark eyes glowing. ‘Davy,’ she said, ‘you’re the perfect housemate.’
I gave a little bow. ‘That’s me,’ I said.