Virtue (44 page)

Oh, and congratulations on the Brit Award, by the way. I’m sure they thought it was far more of an honour than you did!

With love,

Anna

I know Carolyn knows what I’m doing up here, but I don’t want to discuss it. So when I’ve finished, I slip out of the house to post my missive before I lose my nerve, or change my mind, or go back and edit in something spiteful. I buy a stamp from the shop at Sandbanks, and, once I’ve deposited the letter beyond reach, I take the chain ferry over to Studland and go for a walk on the beach.

I can’t tell you what a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I’m full of warmth and love and hope for the future, and my lungs are filled with salt spray from the running tide as it churns beneath the ferry. The railings are lined with painted boards advertising the joys of the Italian restaurant in Swanage and the
Best Fish and Chips in Purbeck
. A couple of teenagers with matching curly perms are stuck halfway down each other’s throats, grinding crotches and taking occasional breaks to puff on Embassies that glow and splinter in the sea breeze. They’re so ugly, and so horny, I even feel full of love for them.

We pull in on the far side and I walk down the gangplank as a couple of dozen cars vie to see who can do the fastest 0–60 handbrake start, and disappear towards the toll-booth a hundred yards further up the road. The teenagers saunter greasily towards the cafe. I walk up past the mysterious phone box buried waist-deep in a sand dune out where no one could possibly want to use it, and hang a left under the swing-barrier to Shell Beach.

It may be past the season for families, but the nudie people are still here. Some of them, judging by the deep mahogany of their skins, unbroken by lines of white where modesty usually prevails, have been here all summer, standing with their hands on their lower backs on the lower reaches of the dunes, pointing their bits to the prevailing wind.

They
are
strange, the nudie people. Where most people are content just to sit and read, or lie full-out and fall asleep in a whelter of glop and sunhats, nudie people always have to be standing, or walking, or doing tai ch’i or some other gymnastic pursuit that involves bending over or spreading your legs, or both, every few seconds. You don’t stop on the nudie strip, or take too many detours from the flat seashore, for even if it weren’t for the strangely un-naked people who perch behind the gorse bushes, one hand on the binoculars they have trained on the gymnasts below, everyone knows that the dunes further back are a famous place of assignation for gay men. Why anyone would want to have sex on a patch of loose sand scattered with the remains of sea-thistles beats me, but there you go. Perhaps they were attracted by the name.

While I walk, I think some more. Like I say, it’s a lot to take in at once. I feel older, but I feel better too. All the lies have been excised now, and I can look at life full-on for the first time ever. I think: the bad stuff’s done with now, you’ve got a good life. You love your job, you love your friends, you love your life. And you owe it all to Harriet Moresby. If she hadn’t come along and picked you up and taught you the meaning of honour, and loyalty, and unquestioning love, you would never have learned to trust anyone; you would maybe still be in your cocoon, hiding from the world, afraid of your own shadow.

I think: Harriet was the first person to tell me the truth, pure and simple. Harriet is the only person who always
has
told me the truth. And that’s the basis of our friendship. We come from families where nothing could be told, where everything was hidden away, changed, airbrushed, twisted to suit convenience, and we took truth, brushed it down, blew off the dust and went:
this is better
. Harriet Moresby saved my life. And I don’t just mean the times she did it for real.

Then the phone rings, and I know, I just
know
, that it’s her. I pick up, go, ‘Harriet?’ and her excited voice goes, ‘Anna!’

‘Harriet! Darling, how are you?’

‘Anna.’ Her voice is dancing, laughing, breathless, ‘Anna, it’s over! We got him! We got him, the bastard, and it’s all all right again.’

‘Got him?’

‘Yes! The man who’s been doing all this. I caught him tampering with the car, and I was beating the crap out of him, and Mike—’

‘It’s okay?’ I can’t believe it.

‘It’s okay. You can go home. I can go home. Come home!’

‘Mike was with you?’

‘Yes! We’re in the police station now! D’you want to talk to him?’

‘I – yes—’

She’s already handed the phone over. He comes on the line, and when his deep, serious voice goes, ‘Anna?’ I know, with a rush, that I am mad, crazy, wild about this man. It’s not just a passing fancy this time, it’s the real thing. Just like Harriet said, he’s not a quick-fling guy, he’s a stayer and, to my astonishment, I realise that I can be a stayer too. No more Happy Slapper, no more eyes across a crowded room, no more do you take milk in your coffee: I can be a stayer too. A month ago the thought would have filled me with horror, but now I know that I will pursue him to the ends of the earth. Because he saved us, he saved me, he’s put our lives back where they were before and he’s just so—

‘Mike?’

‘Hi.’ I can hear a smile in his voice. ‘How are you?’

‘How do you think? Who is this man? What happened?’

‘Sad fella,’ he says. ‘Angry little chap. The doofus actually has the same name as some of those emails. He didn’t even give himself an alias before he sent them. Of course, he denies everything, but considering we caught him with the lid off the petrol tank and a box of matches, I think we’ve got our man.’

‘You’re brilliant. You’re wonderful. Oh, Mike, I could kiss you
right now
.’

‘Steady on, old bean,’ says Harriet, who has taken the phone back while I was talking. ‘Darling, when are you coming back? When are you bringing Henry back?’

‘How’s the tower?’

‘Fucked,’ she says. ‘But we’ll sort it out. Come back, Anna, I miss you. When are you coming back?’

‘There’s a train in a couple of hours,’ I shriek. ‘I’ll be on it if it kills me.’

We meet in the Synagogue, a bar under the arches near Waterloo. I run through the door, fling my arms round her and bounce with happiness. Then I fling my arms round Mike and kiss him firmly on the lips. ‘Thank you! You’re my hero!’

He looks a bit startled. ‘You’re welcome,’ he says. He’s looking just yummy in a black T-shirt bearing the logo of a restaurant in Nassau.

The waitress, in pinny and sensible shoes, comes over with a little silver tray with a doily on. ‘Welcome,’ she says. ‘What can I get you?’

‘Hi,’ I say. ‘What would you recommend?’

‘For you,’ she says, ‘I’d recommend a cup of hot chocolate and an early night, but I suppose you’ll be wanting a cocktail.’

‘That would be good.’

‘What would you like?’

‘What’s nice?’

‘It’s all nice,’ she says. ‘What, you think I wouldn’t have nice in my house?’

‘Well, what’s the choice?’

She reels off a list. ‘Dead Sea Breeze, Kiss of Bethlehem, Nazareth Fizz, Jaffa Sunrise, Eilat Iced Tea, Haifa Head-banger, Jerusalatini. Oh, and there’s the Dome of the Rock if you want something without alcohol.’

‘What’s in a Dead Sea Breeze?’

‘It’s like a normal Sea Breeze,’ she replies, ‘but with a crust of salt round the rim of the glass.’

‘Jaffa Sunrise?’

‘Fresh orange juice, arak, grenadine.’

I don’t even want to know what’s in a Haifa Headbanger. ‘I’ll have the Jerusalatini.’

‘Are you sure? It’s very strong, you know.’

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘Well, it’s your choice,’ she says, and goes away.

I turn to the others, who sit triumphantly elbow to elbow, grinning at me. Harriet looks better than I’ve seen her in a long time. Mike really does look every bit as good as I remember him looking: frank blue eyes smile across the table and my heartstrings go ping. ‘So tell me what happened?’

‘Kapow! Zap!’ says Harriet, with appropriate hand movements. ‘Zing! Wham!’

‘Slightly longer version?’

‘Well,’ she says, ‘we were in the tower trying to sort things out. It’s surprisingly okay, you know. The stairs were disgusting, but I promise I’ve got the worst of the melted stuff off the steps. And I’m afraid your room’s awful. Everything’s black. I think you’re going to have to throw most of your stuff away.’

I take this on the chin. I had expected it, after all.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she continues, ‘but I thought I might as well bundle up most of the cloth stuff and just throw it away. There’s no way any cleaner’s going to be able to get the smoke damage out.’

Oh, dear, I think, my poor chenille.

She senses what I’m thinking. ‘We’ll bring some stuff up from Belhaven,’ she says. ‘The attics are heaving with crap.’

‘Thanks.’

‘So that’s what we were doing. I’d filled up about twenty bin liners and Mike had taken them down to the bottom of the stairs, and the hall had got completely clogged, so we thought we’d better hump them along to the front gate.’

‘It’s incredibly sweet of you to do that,’ I tell him.

‘All part of the service,’ he replies in that laid-back manner.

‘If you can’t rely on the boys in blue for a bit of rubbish clearance,’ says Harriet, ‘what on earth are we paying our taxes for?’

The waitress returns with my Jerusalatini, which turns out to be an ominous sky-blue in colour but contains two beautiful queen olives, and a small plate of falafel. Puts it on the table between us, says, commandingly, ‘Eat!’ and walks away. ‘Did we order this?’ I ask.

‘You get a snack with every drink,’ says Harriet. ‘It’s a gimmick.’

‘Not very cost-effective.’

‘You haven’t seen the price of the drinks. Anyway, I was going down to the gate with, like, five bin liners, and I noticed some sort of movement out of the corner of my eye. Over by the car.’

‘So of course’ – Mike decides to make a contribution – ‘she goes over there to look, doesn’t she? Protective custody, and the first time she sees something suspicious what does she do? Goes off to investigate all by herself.’

Harriet continues. ‘So I went over to look, and there’s nothing there, but then I notice that the lid has been taken off the petrol tank. It’s sitting there on the roof of the car.’

‘Blimey,’ I say. ‘Weren’t you scared?’

‘Scared?’ says Harriet. ‘I was bloody livid.’

‘She has a temper,’ says Mike.

‘I know.’

‘Well, anyway, PC Bloody Plod is still dillying about over by the front door conducting some sort of discreet surveillance of his own backside, so I think: well, obviously it’s up to me again. So I cast about for a bit, and then suddenly this bloke jumps out from the shadows by the boat shed and starts legging it towards the wall.’

‘Poor sod,’ says Mike. ‘He didn’t stand a chance.’

‘Naturally, I thought it was my duty as a good citizen at least to make an attempt at apprehending the villain,’ says Harriet. ‘So I gave chase and conducted a citizen’s arrest. Had him on the ground before you could say stalker. Bugger never knew what hit him.’

‘I had to drag her off,’ he says. ‘You’ve never seen anything like it. Lucky she
wasn’t
on the force or we’d have had a brutality case on our hands. I was only a hundred yards behind her, but by the time I got there, she had his face ground into the mud and was bouncing up and down on him shouting, “You tried to kill my cat, you bastard!” I nearly had to use the handcuffs on
her
.’

There’s a small flash of something between them that I can’t quite make out. The waitress comes back. Points at the uneaten falafel, sighs, says, ‘And what’s wrong with my falafel? You don’t like the falafel?’

I’m immediately consumed by guilt, apologising. ‘No, it’s wonderful. It’s just that none of us is particularly hungry …’

‘Look at you!’ she cries. ‘You’re skin and bone! You’ll fade away to nothing if you don’t eat. Think what all that alcohol is doing to your insides. You can’t drink on an empty stomach.’

‘Thank you,’ says Mike, picks up a falafel, takes a bite. ‘Delicious,’ he announces.

‘“Delicious”, he says,’ she mutters to an imaginary friend floating somewhere near the ceiling. Then, ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting more of those to ruin your health with?’

Mike declines. ‘Thanks. I’m on early duty tomorrow. Can’t afford a woolly head.’ Harriet orders an Eilat Iced Tea and I take another Jerusalatini, which has proven to be very good even if my teeth won’t be thanking me in the morning, and she settles back to her story.

‘Of course, he’s denying everything.’

‘Of course,’ says Mike, proving that in England you are still guilty until proven innocent.

‘His name is Anthony Figgis,’ says Harriet. ‘He’s a quantity surveyor from Dorking and his whole house is like a shrine to my mum.’

‘Walls covered in pictures, scrapbooks full of press cuttings, memorabilia all over the place:
Beach Baby
T-shirts, posters, books, videos, old clothes …’

‘He even,’ she says, ‘had ten of those dolls they made in the seventies. One for each of the costumes so he didn’t have to change them.’

‘But there must be dozens of people like that in the country,’ I say.

‘But none of
them
has been caught with my petrol cap off in the middle of the night,’ Harriet points out.

‘Or sent a couple of dozen nasty emails,’ says Mike. ‘He admits he sent
those
. Says he wanted to teach her some respect. Says he wouldn’t harm a hair on her head.’

‘He’s lucky,’ says Harriet, ‘that I didn’t have time to harm a hair on his.’

‘Has he been charged?’

Mike nods. ‘We’ve hit him with breaking and entering and malicious damage for the time being while we tie him in with the rest. Oh, and theft. He’d been into the car and half-inched a pair of earrings out of the ashtray. Excuse me.’ He stands up, nods towards the Gents.

The minute he’s gone, I lean forward and say, ‘He’s great, isn’t he?’

‘Mmm,’ says Harriet. ‘He’s really great.’

‘Has he been looking after you while I’ve been gone?’