* * *
The following morning saw her in Phil’s office trying to swing another afternoon off.
“What for this time?” asked Phil, peering out at her from under his bushy eyebrows that reminded Faith of a cartoon badger for some reason.
“Root canal treatment, gosh, so painful, Phil.”
Phil didn’t look convinced. “But you went off the other day at what time?”
“I had that booked for weeks.”
“No you didn’t.”
“I did.”
“Well if you did, nobody made me aware of it.”
“I put it in your diary. Is it my fault you never look at your diary and that you rely on me to tell you what’s in it?”
“Exactly and you didn’t tell me what was in it, so how was I to know?”
“Can I just remind you that I haven’t had a proper holiday for over a year, and I take time off so rarely…”
“Exactly, so when you do go waltzing off somewhere, it just seems like an imposition somehow.”
Faith burst out laughing. “Look, you’ve got meetings all afternoon anyway, you won’t even notice I’m not around.”
Phil made a couple more objections but in the end he agreed, although there was a distinct sense that he begrudged Faith her two afternoons off in such quick succession.
Faith ran down the emergency stairs to the bathrooms on the floor below, had a quick cool shower, donned the new underwear and her new dress, put on some make-up and found the escalator. A couple of people turned their heads, not really the garb for a North London office – she looked like a country cousin at a city wedding – but why should she care, there was only one person she wanted to impress and soon she would be with him and she couldn’t wait.
Yes, she was early, ten minutes early, but she still felt deflated when she brought the knocker down hard on the front door of 77 Renfield Road to be met with absolute silence. Faith decided to gain entrance through the cellar again, careful of her new dress as she climbed in through the window, and crossed to the stairs that led into the hall. She went up to the bedroom, stood looking out into the garden, then into the attic, then back down to the living room. She was always drawn to the windows at the back of the house for some reason. The garden was overgrown – a wilderness – but there was something she found infinitely fascinating about it. The foxgloves fighting their way up to the light, the old roses rambling amongst bind weed, the willows weeping. She opened up the back door, negotiated the narrow stone steps and ploughed on through the grass. The garden was much longer than she remembered and at the end of it, right up against the wall, an unmarked wooden cross – a pet’s grave maybe?
An hour later Faith was beginning to think she had dreamt Nick, their encounter, in fact, pretty much the whole thing. He’d seemed pleased at the idea of a second viewing, so where was he? Finally, Faith rang the office to ask.
“Sorry but it’s gone.”
“Gone? The house has gone? But it can’t have gone.”
“We’ve just tied a deal up this morning, sorry about that...”
“The thing is, Nick was due to meet me here today and he hasn’t called to cancel or anything.”
“Nick? We don’t have a Nick here.”
“Your boss, Nick…”
“No, no boss called Nick… maybe you rang a different agent.”
“So it’s with other agents, then?”
“Oh yes, quite a few.”
“I could have sworn it was you but… look, is it definite this sale?”
“Well they do seem very keen, but you never know... I’ll call you shall I, if it falls through?”
When Faith rang off she found herself besieged by a million other question she hadn’t had the foresight to ask, confused mainly as to why Nick hadn’t contacted her to cancel. She was on the verge of calling the agent again, but decided against it. She professed not to know who he was, after all, and anyway she didn’t really want to discuss the mysterious Nick with anyone; she was scared if she did that the spell would be broken and whatever they had or she thought they had, would just simply disappear. So here she was, all tarted up with nowhere to go, no house, no Nick, no marriage, nothing. She climbed the stairs to the attic, curled up on the bed and cried herself to sleep.