Cigarettes lit up. Ken. Tom. Tony Riley. Three out of six smoking. She wanted one too. So badly. The smoke irritated her nose and she sneezed. She opened her handbag and rummaged for her handkerchief; it wasn’t there. Strange, she thought, rummaging again, unzipping the inside pockets and checking those too. She remembered clearly taking out the handkerchief, the one with her initials embroidered on; could have sworn she’d put it in her bag.
‘The girls,’ said Hawksmuir, ‘they simply don’t look like tarts. They look like sweet little girls from next door in fancy dress.’
‘I thought that’s the point,’ Ken said, slowly, tersely.
‘The script said tarts. Hookers, prostitutes. Not little girls dressed up in their mother’s finery for a laugh.’ Hawksmuir stared penetratingly at Sam. ‘What do you think of the girls, Sam? Do you think they’re sexy?’ He gave her a leering smile. ‘What do women find sexy in other women?’
‘I thought the point of the commercial was to hit teenagers, Tom,’ she said, finding she too was having to make an effort to stay calm. ‘I don’t think many teenagers go to prostitutes. They sleep with the girls next door, and they think that that’s safe. We’ve tried to use girls that we felt teenagers, male and female, would relate to.’
‘Let’s go back to that girl in the boa.’
‘Let’s have another run through.’
‘Let’s get pissed, said Ken, as they walked back down Wardour Street. It had turned into a fine, clear day, cold in the blustery wind; crisp. They ducked into the trattoria. It was early. Clean pink tablecloths and shiny cutlery, bread rolls and grissini sticks in their packets, neat, undisturbed.
Sam still felt unsteady when she left the office shortly after six, the stale, caraway taste of the kümmel they had drunk with the coffee lingering in her mouth. She tried to work out how much they had had: two bottles of wine, maybe three, then the liqueur, two glasses, at least. ‘Clear your head,’ Ken had said.
Clear it? Christ. She screwed up her eyes and blinked, and the lights of the early London evening all shifted to the left. There was a dull ache in her stomach, a sharp cheese-knife pain down the centre of her forehead and she was shaking slightly from too many cups of coffee.
She stumbled over a paving stone. The sharp cold air was making her worse, she realised, as she walked unsteadily towards the car park. She wondered for a moment whether she was all right to drive, stopped, and decided she definitely was not. She saw a ‘Hire’ sign bearing down out of the dark, and tripped forward with her arm raised.
‘Wapping High Street,’ she said to the driver. ‘Sixty-four.’ She wondered if she was slurring her words. The rear seat seemed to rise up to meet her before she had got to it, and she sat down with a sharp thump. Oblivion. For a time in the restaurant, there had been oblivion, and it had felt good, felt marvellous, felt as if she was standing on the top of the world.
Ken hadn’t mocked her dream. He was interested, wanted to hear all she could remember, helped her compare it to the events that had been reported in the news, on the television, on the radio. He didn’t have an explanation, but he believed her. Coincidence, he had said finally, trying to reassure her. It was nice just to be believed.
Now the oblivion had mostly faded and she was remembering again.
She stared out at the news-vendor’s hoarding, dimly lit by the street lamp above it, and listened to the rattle of the taxi’s engine as it waited to pull out into the Strand.
AIR DISASTER – PILOT ERROR!
Yes. Now they knew too. They should have rung her and she could have told them. All the grisly details.
Me? Sure, what you want to know? I was there. Eye witness account!
This is Sam Curtis. News At Ten. In Bulgaria.
She sat back and peered out at the lights, the lights that passed, blinked, dazzled and were gone; lights that lit up the mannequins in the shops and threw shadows across the pavement through which people hurried against the cold, against the drizzle, against the clock. Did they all dream too? she wondered, feeling a sudden wave of nausea. She swallowed hard and held her breath, and the wave passed. She closed her eyes and drifted into a jumbled morass of thought.
Then she noticed the taxi had stopped.
‘Sixty-four?’ said a voice.
She opened her eyes, confused, blinking in the darkness. She felt an enormous weight of tiredness, too tired almost to get out of the taxi. She glanced at the red digits of the meter. £3.75. She pulled a banknote out of her handbag and pushed it through the glass. ‘Make it four pounds fifty.’
He took it and sat in silence for a moment, then turned around and thrust something back through the partition window at her. ‘I’d rather have money.’
She felt a thin, stiff piece of card. ‘What’s this?’ she asked.
‘It’s what you gave me.’
‘I gave you a—’ She paused, and blinked again as the interior light came on and stared down at what she was holding.
An orange and white airline boarding card, with the word CHARTAIR printed on it and the number, slightly crooked, that had been stuck on afterwards. 35A.
‘I didn’t – this . . . I didn’t give you this – I’ She looked up baffled, trying to see the taxi driver’s face in the darkness of his cab. Then his own interior light came on, and she could see clearly.
She felt the shock ripple through her, picking her up from her seat like a surging wave and dumping her hard on the floor. She lay there, humiliated, still not wanting to believe, looked again at the boarding card, confused, trembling with fear, then back up at the hooded face that was staring at her, the mouth and one eye grinning malevolently through the slits, the other eye nothing but a livid red socket with the lashes bent inwards.
8
Time froze.
She saw the smile, the hatred; the determination.
Oh Christ, somebody out there help me. Please.
She shot a brief glance through the taxi’s window at the darkness, wondering if she could out-run him. The street was quiet and there were alleyways and hoardings and empty buildings. If he caught her he could take her to any of a hundred places where she would not be found for days.
He was chuckling, enjoying his own private joke, watching her, grinning at her. Taunting her.
She stared at the boarding card, then up again, trying to understand, trying to get her brain to work properly, to make sense. She was in a taxi. She must be safe. Surely.
She shot out her hand and tugged hard on the door handle.
But it would not move.
She threw all her weight onto it. Still nothing. She stared up at him angrily, and he was roaring with laughter. She crawled to her knees and tried to pull down the window, and the metal flap sheared away, cutting her finger. She dived across the other side, and tried that door handle too. But she knew, even before she reached it, that it would not move. She scrambled back, grabbed the other door handle again and shook it wildly.
‘Help! Let me out! Let me out!’
‘Lady?’
‘Help me!’
‘Lady?’
She shook the handle again.
‘Lady? Are you all right lady?’
The voice cut through the darkness, puzzled, gentle.
‘Lady?’
She stared, blinking at the pool of orange light. Street lamp, she thought.
‘Are you all right, lady?’
She heard the rattle of the taxi’s engine, and a man with a kind face, in a peaked cap and moustache, was staring down at her worriedly from the driver’s seat.
She suddenly realised she was lying on the floor, felt it shaking, could smell the rubber matting. She was clutching the door handle. ‘I—’ Her head swam with confusion and she thought for a moment she was going to pass out. She closed her eyes tightly, then opened them again. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I . . . had – I—’
He came round and opened the door for her, then helped her to her feet and out of the cab. ‘I thought you was having a
funny turn in there for a moment.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, beginning to feel foolish as she became more conscious. ‘I fell asleep . . . I was having a – dream. How much do I owe?’
‘Three seventy-five,’ he said. ‘Do you want an ’and to your doorstep?’
Three seventy-five, she thought vaguely. Same as in the dream. ‘No, fine. I’ll be fine, thank you.’ She handed him a fiver. Make it four-fifty—’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve been a nuisance. Keep the change, please.’
She turned and hurried away up the steps into the porch, heard the dick as she broke the beam and the automatic light came on, silently and obediently. She tapped out the combination code and turned around. She saw, through the darkness, the face of the driver as he reset his meter then switched off his interior light.
She stood and waited for him to drive off, shaking, her mind blurred with fear.
9
The woman’s shadow fell across the gravestone, blocking the dim glow of light from the distant church window. The wind shook the trees, rattling the branches like bones, and carried faint strains of hymns from the choir practice; the woman was panting.
Tall, heavy boned, in her early seventies, she was unused to running, and it took her a while to catch her breath and for the pain in her chest to subside, took her a while for the excitement that bubbled like a cauldron inside her to calm enough so she could speak.
Her shadow bobbed over the words, revealing them for a moment, then blotting them out again.
‘BILLY WOLF. 1938–1964.’
She knelt, as was her custom, closed her eyes tightly and murmured a rapid sequence of inaudible prayers. She rocked backwards and forwards, murmuring faster and faster until the words became a single high-pitched keening, and thick tears brimmed in her eyes, blinding her. Then she remained in silence, with her eyes tightly shut, until she could no longer contain her excitement. She opened her eyes and stood up.
‘I’ve brought you a present, Billy,’ she said in a guttural mid-European accent. ‘You’re going to be very pleased with me. So pleased! I know you are. Look, Billy!’ She pulled the handkerchief from her old beaten-up handbag and held it out to the gravestone.
‘It’s hers, Billy! This’ll do, won’t it?’ She beamed. ‘I know you’re pleased. It’s taken so long to find her. The uncle and aunt adopted her, you see. They changed her name, took her a long way away. But we’ve found her again now. Little bitch. We’re all right, now, Billy.’ She held the handkerchief up once more, smiled at it, then folded it and put it carefully away in her bag. ‘We’ve got everything, Billy.
‘We’re going to get her now.’
10
‘Hey look at that! Ferrari – wow! Go faster, race it Mummy! Aww!’
The tail of the red sports car disappeared into the distance.
‘Why are you driving so slowly, Mummy?’
‘We’re doing eighty, Tiger.’
‘That’s not very fast.’
‘It’s ten over the speed limit.’
‘Was that man breaking the law then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Daddy breaks the law. He did one hundred and thirty-five last Saturday. Hey! Here’s Daddy. Ohh.’
Sam glanced at Nicky in the rear-view mirror of the Range Rover, his face pressed against the window.
‘It’s not Daddy. It’s just like Daddy’s. Except Daddy’s is a faster one. Why are we turning off?’
‘We have to go shopping.’
‘Oh noo! Do you like shopping, Helen?’
Helen looked round. ‘Depends what I’m buying, Nicky.’
‘How can anybody like shopping?’
‘And now coming up before the news is the weekend weather report for Sussex and the South Downs. And it’s going to be dry and windy with a possibility of gales . . . so hold onto your hats and your wigs and let’s take you back to the summer of ’67. The Kinks. “Sunny Afternoon”.’
She drove into the parking lot of Safeways, the song stirring some vague pleasant memory inside her. They each took a trolley and marched in. Nicky sideswiped a display of alcohol-free lager, then crashed head-on with another trolley and got them so firmly locked together they both had to be abandoned. He swung on a barrier, trod in someone’s basket and climbed a mountain of Heinz Baked Beans – 4p OFF! – which disintegrated under him.
She drove out with a feeling of relief.
‘Are we having burgers?’
‘Yes.’
‘And sausages?’
‘Yes.’
‘Goodee!’
She braked hard and the tyres squealed as the Range Rover slewed to a halt throwing Helen forward against her seat belt.
‘Sorry,’ Sam said, staring up at the red traffic light. She turned around to Nicky, strapped into the rear seat. ‘Okay, Tiger?’
He nodded, intently studying the cars crossing the intersection. ‘Ford, Ford, Datsun, Rover, Toyota, Ford, Citroën, Porsche! Is Daddy going to be there, Mummy?’
‘He’ll be there tonight. He’s gone shooting.’
‘I want to go shooting. He promised to take me shooting.’
‘Perhaps he’ll take you tomorrow.’ Shooting. She screwed up her nose, wishing Richard wouldn’t encourage him. She wanted Nicky to be brought up in the country, and cultivated friends in London who had places in the country, as well as trying hard to make friends locally. The only thing she did not like about the country was shooting. She accepted it, but always uneasily. She turned back around and looked up at the road signs. LEWES BRIGHTON EASTBOURNE TUNBRIDGE WELLS. The light changed, she pushed the gear lever forward and let out the clutch.
‘Vauxhall, Austin, Volkswagen, Jaguar, Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, Fiat . . .’
‘Hey! Give us a break, Tiger.’ Car names. He knew every single one.
‘Is the goose going to be there, Mummy?’
‘On the farm? I expect so.’
‘Would a goose peck you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would it kill you?’
She smiled. ‘No.’
‘Would it eat you if it did kill you?’
The black hood with the knife slits stared out through the taxi driver’s partition.
‘It wouldn’t kill you.’
The raw livid eye socket.
Nothing. They were nothing. Old images from old dreams. They meant nothing; forget them. The mind playing tricks. Been upset over Richard’s affair – probably triggering it off.
And the dream of the air disaster?
Coincidence. Ken was right. Coincidence, Leaving it behind her now. Leaving it all like a vanishing speck in the rear-view mirror. The country was the place she loved. Great to get away from London. The whole weekend. Nicky’s party. Hard work but fun. The weekend was going to be great, would heal the wounds.
She turned off the main road into a narrow lane with a tall hedgerow on each side. A pheasant scurried along like a lame old woman. It was difficult to get used to the lane being much brighter now, since the hurricane last October. The trees that had made it dark had mostly gone. Everywhere you looked in the countryside you saw broken trees, uprooted trees, as if a giant had clumped through kicking things over for fun.
‘I know where we are now! I know where we are now!’
She drove in through a narrow broken-down gateway, across a cattle grid, past a sign marked FARM LANE, OLD MANOR FARM, LANE HOUSE, and forked onto a ribbon of crumbling concrete like a causeway across the ploughed field. The Range Rover lurched through a pothole, dipped again, the suspension crashing, the steering wheel kicking hard in her hands. A faint smell of mud, manure and damp straw permeated through the closed windows.
‘This is a silly road,’ said Nicky.
She turned left again on the far side of the field, past the front of the farm with its cluster of outhouses, barns and silos, and down a steep hill. The rooftop of the house came into view first then disappeared behind some fir trees. They wound down past a tumbledown barn, which always made something
creep inside her, round to the front of the house.
The house had been fine when they’d bought it and they could have lived in it as it was, but Richard didn’t think it was grand enough. He had had it gutted, rooms knocked through, new mouldings on the walls and ceilings, a swimming pool dug out, a hard tennis court laid. Money pouring out like water; money she didn’t know they had. Money that Andreas seemed to magically provide through deals she did not understand. Andreas, the Swiss banker whom Richard had befriended, had become obsessed with, talked to on the phone constantly when he was at home, fawned over when he had come to dinner. She wondered whether Richard had begun to change when the money started to roll; or was it when he had started going with the tart in the office? Or was it Andreas? Andreas whom she had finally met two nights ago. With his black leather glove.
They’d lost part of the roof in the hurricane and it was still being fixed now. Rusty scaffolding clung to the wall at one end, a sheet of bright blue tarpaulin flapping from it in the wind. Something about the scaffolding did not look right to her – it seemed to have come loose, seemed to be swaying.
The house was a Victorian farmhouse. The farmer lost both his legs in an accident, and had gassed himself in the tumbledown barn with the exhaust fumes of his car. His widow had sold off the farm and moved away; they’d only heard the story after they’d bought the house and she wondered if she would have tried to dissuade Richard had she known. Since she had heard the history, she always felt the house had a slightly melancholic feeling to it. It was the inside she liked most: the large, elegant rooms, some which they had made even larger, large enough to entertain in style, but not so large the place wouldn’t feel like a home.
She swung the steering wheel to avoid a crater in the crumbling driveway. ‘That’s a job you can have, Tiger,’ she said, more brightly than she felt. ‘You can fill in the holes.’
‘No.’
‘Why not, Nicky?’ said Helen.
‘Umm. Coz there might be fish in them.’
The gravel of the circular drive rattled against the underside of the Range Rover, thick wall-to-wall gravel that the wheels sank into up to their hubs. She pulled on the handbrake and switched off the engine. Silence. Peace. She felt a gust of wind rock the car. Nicky tugged excitedly at his door handle. ‘Birthday tomorrow! Yeah!’